Screen
The art of the reel
Ghosts aren’t real. This is now confirmed scientific fact after the disembodied spirit of original Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton didn’t immediately, ectoplasmically engulf or...
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 “...
BIFF: God Loves Uganda
The documentary God Loves Uganda begins innocently enough, outlining evangelical outreach efforts by the Kansas City-based International House of Prayer (yes, they refer to it as IHOP) to Uganda...
Right story, wrong script
Red Tails squanders a great subject, reducing the real-life struggles and fierce heroics of the Tuskegee Airmen to rickety cliché. Some of the action is fun. But if something about that statement doesn’t sound right, well, there’s your chief problem with Red Tails. ...
Revenge with a twist that falls short in ‘Citizen’
Law Abiding Citizen is the latest in the bad-lawyer genre, with Jamie Foxx as careerfocused attorney Nick Rice, who accepts a plea bargain from the killer of affable inventor Clyde Shelton’s (Gerard Butler) family to ensure his excellent trial outcome record...
Where the coconuts are
Zama — the latest from Argentinean writer/director Lucrecia Martel — opens with a parable: There is a fish, a long-suffering fish, which spends its...
‘And the nominees are…’
The nominees for the 95th Academy Awards are in: 54 movies competing in 23 categories. The headlines already belong to the genre-smashing Everything Everywhere...
C’mon get happy
Judy Garland was born in
a trunk. Or so the story goes in A Star Is Born, a movie
about an aging actor on his way...
Majestical or just majestic?
Family units are fascinating things. Some come ready-made, while others must be forged out of sheer will. That’s what Ricky (Julian Dennison) is hoping...
Rednecks and white lightning
Scuff him, scrape him, buff him up; nobody is going to buy Shia LaBeouf as a country boy. He has a face built for Instagram and his posture is that of a narcissist demanding bottle service at a trendy club. Even though he plays the least burly of the Bondurant boys, ...
Denver Film Festival: Brit Withey Tribute
On March 31, 2019, Colorado lost one of its great champions of cinema:
Brit Withey. Withey, who died in a one-car crash, was the artistic...
