Screen
Mutant fight club
Those who only know comic books through their (somehow) still-increasingly popular cinematic adaptations don’t know the dirty secret about the source material: Most story...
‘New Moon’ a tick better than first ‘Twilight’
The Twilight Saga: New Moon, also known as "Twilight: The Squeakquel," is actually pretty good — a tick better than the...
Unmixed tape
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 feels like a suitor who discovered that his beloved enjoys chocolate and then filled an Olympic-sized swimming pool...
Ditching the mansion for the trailer
Filmmaker Tom Shadyac is best known for comedies such as Bruce Almighty, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and The Nutty Professor, which have filled his bank account with plenty of green. However, Shadyac, whose newest film, I AM, lands in Denver at the Landmark Chez ...
Wes Anderson could go full Burton
It’s not writer/director Wes Anderson’s fault that since he burst on the scene with what is still his best film, Bottle Rocket, he has become a hipster demigod...
Cinema highlights
How bad of a year was it for movies? As late as August, I was wondering if there would be enough films to fill a list of 10. Then came the fall movie season and everything changed...
White people nearly died
The 2004 tsunami that struck Eastern Asia was the sixth deadliest “act of God” in recorded history and quieted just fewer than 300,000 lives. The first major motion picture to tackle the subject, The Impossible, is about a group of white folks who get injured and ...
Whirl fools
Imagine watching Star Wars and deciding the franchise should forever forward follow C-3PO. And that C-3PO was played by a former hunk who now...
Frozen is a bit childish, but that’s OK
Dangling from the edge of Mount Treacly, overlooking the icy abyss of Cliché River, Frozen hurls a Bechtel rope and swings itself to safety in the nick of time. And just in case you miss the climax’s blatantly obvious flipping of established Disney gender roles, ...
Xerox Xerxes
When director Zack Snyder’s opus of underwear modeling amidst geysers of animated blood, 300, first arrived eight years ago, no one expected a sequel. And not just because 299 of the 300 Spartans were way too dead to return. Technically, 300: Rise of an Empire isn’t ...
That’s enough, James Franco
At one point, our collective return to Oz (not be confused with Return to Oz, sorry Faruza) was going to see director Sam Raimi deploy Robert Downey Jr. as his titular wizard. The short list after Downey split must have consisted of just two names: James Franco and “...
