With all due respect to the barbecue kings who enlivened The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a pair of deranged Danes called The Green Butchers would likely win the cordon bleu for cannibal cuisine. Hannibal Lecter himself might savor something called “Svend’s Chicky-Wickies” — not poultry at all, of course, but fillet…
When did we first encounter a feel-good film that united delinquent kids, a devoted (if professionally frustrated) teacher and the transformative power of music? Was it with Julie Andrews? Could it have been the spirited, soft-hearted Maria and her Austrian brood, trilling their way up the hills above the abbey?…
In her first stab at narrative drama, writer-director Shainee Gabel has managed to assemble a superstar cast and a seasoned technical team. She spent five years on the project, adapting an unpublished novel written by the father of a friend, working with a clarity of vision and an admirable goal:…
Last fall, the Swiss-French, Denver-based director Alexandre O. Philippe completed a profoundly weird and wonderfully engaging documentary called Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water — a vivid look at the quirky obsessions of members of something called the Klingon Language Institute. For those who have confined their travels, real and…
The Eternal Gift. The Taylor Museum in the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is showing off some of its treasure in The Eternal Gift: Selections From the Fine Arts Center’s Permanent Collection. The Taylor’s inventory has many strengths, including modern art from the early to mid-twentieth century, which is what’s…
You have to hand it to Sean Penn. Okay, you don’t absolutely have to, and if you’re a red-stater through and through, you certainly won’t want to — but give him some credit. After being pilloried in the press for visiting Iraq under Saddam’s reign, torn apart by housecats in…
Assault on Precinct 13, the sluggish remake of John Carpenter’s grungy 1976 movie of the same name, begins with a bang to which it never lives up. In a smoky den of all manner of iniquity, Ethan Hawke’s trying to close a drug deal. With his girl splayed out on…
The promos read: “24 hours. 350 miles. His girlfriend’s kids. What could possibly go wrong?” In the case of Are We There Yet?, here’s the short answer: a flaccid screenplay; bratty kids stripped of depth and personality; a single joke replayed in every scene; unearned attempts at sentiment; and a…
When the great French director Jean Renoir immigrated to the United States, he wasted no time making an American masterpiece that is, in the view of many film scholars, the equal of Grand Illusion or The Rules of the Game. The Southerner, released in 1945, chronicles the struggle of a…
ANGST. Though unified by the title ANGST, this duet exhibit put together by Lisbeth Neergaard Kohloff at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center is actually a pair of freestanding solos: IMAGING ACROPHOBIA and NIGHTWALK. IMAGING ACROPHOBIA is Colorado photographer Andrew Beckham’s exploration of his fear of heights in a series of…
Nobody messes with Samuel L. Jackson — at least not at the movies. He’s Shaft reinvented, the coolest cop on the street. He’s Mace Windu, the only swashbuckler in the Star Wars galaxy who gets to swing a purple light-saber. Best of all, he’s Jules Winnfield, the ultra-hip hit man…
The grim little green-walled apartment where Walter finds himself after his release has the look of a jail cell — with one apparent easement. What seems to be the only window in the place faces a school playground across the street. When Walter looks outside, he often sees kids running…
Together with his brother Chris, Paul Weitz wrote and directed 2002’s adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel About a Boy, in which a cocky grown man (Hugh Grant) learned how to actually act like a grown man by observing a gawky young boy (Nicholas Hoult) who was nearly abandoned by his…
Joined at the hip and in the editing room, the peerless co-writer/directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger have been called “the Lennon and McCartney of British cinema” because they brought artistic striving and a daring spirit of invention to every film they made together — even the most commercial projects…
Now Showing Better Times, et al. Contemporary painter Evan Colbert has been successfully riffing on minimalism, pop art and conceptualism for the last several years — and he’s not about to stop now. Among his most interesting pieces are those in which he creates a color field based on paint…
lint Eastwood began digging into the third act of his career — the one that reveals the mature, deep-thinking artistŠwith a little jazz piano on the side — a dozen years ago, with the discomfiting anti-Western Unforgiven. Since then, he’s hardly come up for air or given himself a break…
At first glance, White Noise looks like one more supernatural thriller aimed at an audience that’s easily scared and easily parted from its hard-earned cash. It will be lumped in among the Rings, Grudges, Otherses and other gotcha creepshows inhabited by rancorous ghosts and pissed-off ghouls out to off those…
The early reviews for Beyond the Sea, the Bobby Darin biopic on which Kevin Spacey did everything except feed the crew and sweep the set, have been so hateful that a latecomer to the bashing bash is tempted to head straight for the spiked eggnog and let the man pass…
Better Times, et al. Contemporary painter Evan Colbert has been successfully riffing on minimalism, pop art and conceptualism for the last several years — and he’s not about to stop now. Among his most interesting pieces are those in which he creates a color field based on paint chips and…
Our best movies of the year may actually have been anything but the best to a few of our critics: Such is the dilemma of offering employment to writers of dissenting opinion. In other words, the No. 1 film of 2004 wasn’t universally heralded by our team of Bill Gallo,…
The Gospel According to Mel Who needs studio publicists when every fundamentalist pastor in the country is herding his flock to the multiplex? Why waste good money on TV spots when the Vatican is handing out rave reviews? No doubt about it, Thomas, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ…
While Michael Moore and Mel Gibson garnered most of this year’s critical attention, plenty of fine films opened to little or no fanfare. Following are our reviewers’ favorite movies that didn’t draw the adulation they deserved. Consider yourself armed for the next trip to Blockbuster. Control Room. In a year…
