Screen
Preach, Spike. Preach.
Spike Lee is many things; subtle is not one of them. In 1989 — with three movies under his belt — the Brooklyn-based producer/director exploded on to a grand stage with Do the Right Thing. The movie stirred the pot and caused a fair amount of controversy, but what ...
No music, no life
Tower Records was once the place where many gathered to hear great new music, tell their friends about a record they just heard and, most importantly, to purchase it. Tower Records was the place where Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl worked the ...
In this life or the next
Filmmaking is an act of optimism. Setting ideas to paper, convincing others to come and join the party, devoting time, money, blood, sweat and tears to capture those images on celluloid, believing those images can carry meaning throughout the world and, hopefully, ...
Meet Dalton Trumbo
If you’ve spent any time on CU’s campus, you probably noticed the courtyard fountain next to the UMC — the kind where couples take their engagement photos and children play on hot summer days. You might’ve even noticed the small plaque on the south pillar, dedicating...
Oh no, double 0
One time, in a James Bond movie, Denise Richards played a nuclear scientist named Dr. Christmas Jones. It’s just important for everybody freaking out about how Spectre isn’t that great to remember how far away we are from the franchise’s event horizon of bullshit. ...
You’re a good man, Charlie Brown
In the midst of cynically recycled nostalgia, bombastic franchises, reboots and sequels aplenty, it’s surprising that two of the best family movies to come out in 2015 were based on material first published in the 1950s. First was the wonderfully gentle and English, ...
I hate myself and I want to scream
Laney Brooks (Sarah Silverman) has problems. She tells her husband ( Josh Charles) that she doesn’t want her children to have a dog because they will fall in love with the dog, causing them to be devastated when it eventually dies. Since things die, why bother loving...
The core of Apple’s man
Apparently, writer Aaron Sorkin has decided that his “thing” is making fascinating films out of seemingly unfilmable, boring-ass ideas. I don’t have an iPhone. I don’t like Apple. I don’t like Steve Jobs. I don’t care about Steve Jobs. I didn’t care to ever see a ...
Who doesn’t want 15 minutes of fame?
Finders Keepers is as delightful as it is bizarre. It is the story of an amputated left foot and the two men who fought over it from 2008 to 2014. Some things you just have to see to believe...
Lower-case Spielberg
In general, I’m not a big fan of holding artists accountable to the standard set by their best work. Making something “good” after making something “great,” doesn’t mean that the good thing is any less objectively good or that the great thing is any more great. What ...