Serenity (Universal) Joss Whedon’s film version of his TV series Firefly came and went like a lightning bug in October; the predicted phenom stuck around the multiplex just long enough to lose millions. But like Firefly, which sold enough boxed sets to warrant a movie, Serenity’s bound to do well…
Andy Warhol’s Dream America. Hot on the heels of its smash hit, Chihuly, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is presenting yet another blockbuster devoted to the work of a household name in contemporary art: Andy Warhol’s Dream America. The exhibition was curated by Ben Mitchell of Wyoming’s Nicolaysen Museum…
Those who will sit around wondering whether Munich is the work of an anti-Israeli or just a self-hating Jew — which is to say, Steven Spielberg, who has been branded both by Israeli officials and newspaper columnists in recent weeks — give the movie and its maker far too much…
The Jerry Lewis chromosome is running amok again inside Jim Carrey, and if you don’t feel like getting clubbed half to death with a slapstick, stay away from Fun With Dick and Jane. On the other hand, if Carrey’s tireless antics — slithering onto nightclub tables, speaking in tongues and…
The gifted Irish novelist and filmmaker Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Michael Collins) says that his overriding concern is “how individuals work with what they’ve been given.” Case in point: Jordan’s new feature, Breakfast on Pluto. This bittersweet, gender-bending drama takes a page from Candide — its beleaguered hero, too,…
In 1968 it was a movie. In 2001 it became a musical. Now it’s a movie again? Yep, and there’s actually a pretty good reason to return The Producers to the screen. The original film, though intermittently inspired, was slow and often boring, and its homophobic, misogynistic humor no longer…
For your Heath Ledger holiday-movie options, you have: a) a cowboy in love with another man; and b) history’s most infamous womanizer. Since the name Casanova is synonymous with an unquenchable thirst for straight sex with women (or at least boasting about it), the role might seem to be a…
The notion that Wolf Creek is opening nationwide on Christmas Day brings to mind the scene from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, in which a young boy opens up his holiday gift and finds a severed head. The movie is about as diametrically opposed to the concept of “goodwill…
It’s impossible to talk about The Ringer, a comedy about someone pretending to be retarded in order to rig the Special Olympics, without mentioning that episode of South Park in which Cartman does the same thing. The Ringer was already in production when that episode was made, and it has…
Unless your new plasma TV is the size of a conference table, it’s a good idea to skip the DVD option and make straight for a movie theater to take in Lawrence of Arabia. The deepest pleasure of David Lean’s 1962 classic — all 227 minutes of it in the…
Sin City: Recut, Extended, Unrated (Buena Vista) Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s near frame-for-frame adaptation of Miller’s bone-crunching comics finally gets a rewarding DVD treatment, following a shamefully sparse edition earlier this year. The theatrical cut boasts two commentary tracks (with Quentin Tarantino and Bruce Willis, among others), but there…
Andy Warhol’s Dream America. Hot on the heels of its smash hit, Chihuly, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is presenting yet another blockbuster devoted to the work of a household name in contemporary art: Andy Warhol’s Dream America. The exhibition was curated by Ben Mitchell of Wyoming’s Nicolaysen Museum…
It’s not hard to predict how Ang Lee’s controversial Brokeback Mountain will play in John Wayne country. This romantic tragedy about a pair of lean, wind-burned cowpokes who secretly live to poke each other flies in the face of everything that most people in Casper or Riverton or Laramie think…
For whatever reason, the modernized, comic redo of King Kong released exactly 29 years ago has become less the “pop classic” that Pauline Kael insisted it was at the time than a dimly remembered punch line. It barely registers with modern-day movie-goers, who remember it as a campy, eco-aware update…
One cannot, in good conscience, describe the countless strands of plot and strains of characters skittering through The Family Stone without knowing that description merits at least a snickerŠokay, all right, bellowing guffaws. The movie’s too overstuffed by half with pointless people and plotlines that dangle like warning signs, begging…
Yes, the title’s a problem. Three of Hearts was a 1993 romantic comedy starring Kelly Lynch, Sherilyn Fenn and William Baldwin, a distasteful clunker that traded on male titillation with lesbians and bisexual women. Worse, the poster for the new Three of Hearts is achingly similar to that of its…
Before Willy Wonka started churning out chocolate bars and Victor Van Dort inadvertently married a dead girl, Johnny Depp brought another of director Tim Burton’s adolescent fantasy figures to weird life. In 1990, Depp became Edward Scissorhands, a dangerously equipped dreamer who used his artistic dexterity on hairdos and hedges…
Cinderella Man (Universal) Back in the Great Depression, boxing matches only cost a nickel, and the ring was uphill both ways. That’s the central message of this well-made if sappy bio of 1930s boxer Jim Braddock. Ron Howard’s direction and a stellar cast save the film from its one-dimensional characters…
Andy Warhol’s Dream America. Hot on the heels of its smash hit, Chihuly, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is presenting yet another blockbuster devoted to the work of a household name in contemporary art: Andy Warhol’s Dream America. The exhibition was curated by Ben Mitchell of Wyoming’s Nicolaysen Museum…
If you’re a fan of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, all you need to know is this: Disney has done right by The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It’s impossible to imagine it done much better, in fact. If you’re not a fan, perhaps you’re among…
Warner Bros. put $50 million into Syriana and allowed writer-director Stephen Gaghan as much time and travel as necessary to research and write his story. The company would be well advised to pony up a few extra bucks to provide film-goers with a flow chart that connects the myriad scattered…
It begins with a very literal cliffhanger. Five snowboarders — the best in their field, we’re told — are dropped off via helicopter atop an Alaskan mountain called 7601, imaginatively named for its height above sea level. Swooping aerial shots around the peak convince us that it’s steep, high and…
