Like the wounded nation that loved him, he was uncertain and half crippled. So in the depths of the Great Depression, when a knock-kneed thoroughbred named Seabiscuit rose up to outrun the elite racehorses of the day, he became a folk hero suited to his moment and a fixture in…
I purposely avoided reading anything about Capturing the Friedmans before seeing the film, which was no easy task. Andrew Jarecki’s documentary — about a Great Neck, New York, family torn asunder in the late 1980s by allegations of kiddie-porn possession and the horrific sexual abuse of numerous children — has…
So much for those crackpot theories about flighty teenagers and their short attention spans. For four long years now, the bland pop star Mandy Moore has stuck in the brainpan of white adolescent America like a wad of bubble gum, and there’s no sign that she will loosen her grip…
To prepare for reviewing Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, I did the obvious research: I watched Yellowbeard again. Yes, yes, indeed — can’t do without Fairbanks as the Black Pirate and Flynn as Captain Blood. But when appraising a new comedic pirate adventure, it’s important…
French director François Ozon doesn’t like to repeat himself. His last film, 8 Women, was a theatrical, rather campy piece of fluff starring the crème de la crème of contemporary Gallic actresses. Before that came Under the Sand, an unsettling drama about a woman (Charlotte Rampling, giving perhaps her finest…
Before the cult of Twin Peaks shook up American television, long before the unfettered weirdness of Mulholland Drive, pop culture’s most dedicated surrealist, David Lynch, gave us a fascinating precursor, Blue Velvet (1986). Peeping through the windows of a seemingly normal small town, Lynch finds murder and perversion in the…
Much like “hilarious Islamic comedy” or “sublime Affleck picture,” the term “terrific second sequel” isn’t bandied about very much. Name one. Took you a minute, didn’t it? Don’t be ashamed — there are probably support groups for fans of Smokey and the Bandit III. Generally, creative juices are drained by…
The Chicago-based filmmaker Steve James rose to prominence in 1994 with Hoop Dreams, a gritty, uncomfortably intimate portrait of two inner-city kids who try to escape poverty and deprivation through basketball. Shot over four years, it was at once a stirring indictment of the social-services bureaucracy, a tribute to family…
The Boulder Public Library has been running a Stanley Kubrick retrospective since early May as part of its popular free summer movie series, and it’s difficult to imagine a more welcome return to the big screen than Kubrick’s gorgeous vision of eighteenth-century Europe, Barry Lyndon (1975). Adapted from William Makepeace…
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and it’s all PETA’s fault. Oh, we humored those wacky vegan extremists when they threw paint at rich bitches in hideously overpriced fur coats. We laughed when they’d come on conservative talk-radio shows every Thanksgiving to get mocked for comparing…
Once in a while, a film comes along that is as sound, smart, sweet and significant as can be, and Whale Rider is such a film. Fault the project on various counts if you like (I’ll try), but ultimately the tale is beyond reproach, a bane to cynics and a…
As the Columbia Pictures logo looms large on the screen until its torch becomes the focal point, we find ourselves in what appears to be a tent full of sweaty medieval warriors forging axes. We have to wonder: Did they already make another Scorpion King movie and not tell us?…
Norma Desmond would love it. This summer, the Chautauqua Silent Film Series will once more bring to Boulder a broad array of classics from Hollywood’s silent era, along with a touch of vintage Fritz Lang, complete with live musical accompaniment. If some rude blabbermouth in the row behind you disturbs…
He’s twelve feet tall. He’s ripped. He’s quick as a tiger and fierce as a dragon. Lit to a dull green glow by his fury, the guy is sheer, boundless power. Any NFL team you can think of would love to start him at middle linebacker. But as art-house director…
The hero of Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen is an isolated teenager mired in a gray Scottish slum with only a vague dream of family life to sustain him. Like previous Loach heroes — the impoverished boy who finds hope training a falcon in Kes, say, or the downtrodden working stiff…
Cult director Trent Harris, whose bizarre and challenging films have thrilled cutting-edge cineasts the world over, will appear in person Friday and Saturday nights as a guest of the International Film Series at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Harris will screen two of his most renowned works, Beaver Trilogy…
The most compelling characters in Jeff Blitz and Sean Welch’s vivid, eye-opening documentary Spellbound are not the film’s geeky, often bewildered twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, who find themselves shoved into the spotlight at the National Spelling Bee, but the overbearing, variously motivated parents who do the shoving. The film has generally…
There is a new movie out. It is called Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd. It is a prequel to the 1994 movie by Peter and Bobby Farrelly called Dumb and Dumber. In that movie, Harry was played by Jeff Daniels. Lloyd was played by Jim Carrey. Parts of…
Mel Brooks’s none-too-funny parody of Star Wars, 1987’s Spaceballs, was released at the low ebb of the great comedian’s career. Two of Brooks’s most inventive movie hits, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, were already ancient history, buried back in the 1970s chapter of his life, and Broadway wouldn’t reinvent the…
Whenever the stars of the adolescent street-racing fantasy 2 Fast 2 Furious were feeling balky or temperamental on the set, as movie stars are wont to do, the cure was probably easy: an oil change and a tuneup. John Singleton’s adrenaline-spiked sequel to the surprise summer hit of 2001, The…
The French government should officially proclaim actor Jean Rochefort a national treasure. A fixture of Gallic cinema for five decades, he is best known to American audiences for his comedic turns in such sex farces as Pardon Mon Affaire and The Closet, and, of course, his near-miss as Don Quixote…
Once the enfant terrible of post-war German cinema, the single-minded director Werner Herzog made half a dozen great films in the 1970s, including Fata Morgana, Every Man for Himself and God Against All and his chilling update on F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu, the Vampyre. But Herzog’s most memorable (and most characteristic)…
