Once you get past its negligible plot, scant dialogue and almost zero action, Gus Van Sant’s elliptical rendering of the final hours in the troubled life of a grunge musician is rarely boring. That may seem like a backhanded compliment, but, given the absence of such customary cinematic conventions as…
The zombie king, George Romero, has got to love Shaun of the Dead. In Edgar Wright’s witty 2004 sendup of the ghouls-on-the-loose genre, we meet a pair of North London layabouts who are a lot more concerned with scoring their next pint of bitter than with saving the world from…
2005 Biennial BLOW OUT. This is the third in a series of biennials presented at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. In the past, participation in these biennials was limited to artists from around here; for the 2005 version, it’s been expanded to include artists working in most of the Western…
If the Navy is looking for splashy recruiting tools, it could do worse than Stealth, a zillion-dollar action movie stuffed with futuristic jet fighters, glamorous carrier pilots and an overload of explosive (mostly digital) derring-do. Here is Top Gun revised and updated, complete with a new array of enemies –…
Hit me,” Mark Zupan says — begs, actually, like a kid clamoring for a new toy. “I’ll hit you back.” He means it, too, and his ripped pecs and buzzed scalp and tattooed back and arms and bushy gangster goatee promise just as much menace. The dude’s bad and doesn’t…
Toward the end of Saraband, the uneven new film from legendary director Ingmar Bergman, a character sits down with his daughter, a taut girl who is obviously undergoing emotional distress. “I have the feeling that some sort of discussion is coming on,” he says. Indeed it is — as it…
Remember the scene in X2 where Wolverine grabs a Dr Pepper and enlists the aid of Iceman to make it cold? Take the tone of that scene and stretch it out to feature length, and you’ve got Sky High, a less angsty, more kid-friendly movie about teenagers attending a school…
Must Love Dogs, it should be clearly stated, is not the greatest romantic comedy ever made about a quirky couple who meet at a dog park. That honor goes to Dog Park, the oddball 1998 flick starring Luke Wilson and Natasha Henstridge, written and directed by former Kids in the…
The Flashback Wednesdays series at the Regency Tamarac Square is a movie nostalgiaphile’s delight, not least because the fare tends to go easy on the cerebral cortex while providing a maximum of entertainment value. That’s the appeal of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Amy Heckerling’s terrific 1982 feature about Southern…
2005 Biennial BLOW OUT. This is the third in a series of biennials presented at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. In the past, participation in these biennials was limited to artists from around here; for the 2005 version, it’s been expanded to include artists working in most of the western…
It should come as no surprise that the hero and heroine of the new Michael Bay action extravaganza are clones. Exact copies of other people. You don’t get to be a Hollywood hit-meister like Bay — 200 Zillion Tickets Sold! — without indulging in formulas, and the characters that Star…
The questing hero of Hans Petter Moland’s The Beautiful Country is a slender, big-eyed young man named Binh (California-educated Damien Nguyen), who has little going for him but his obsession. Ostracized in his homeland because he’s the offspring of a Vietnamese mother and an American G.I. father — bui doi,…
MTV Films made a wise purchase in picking up Hustle & Flow at Sundance: The soundtrack is killer. Rapping over music composed by Three 6 Mafia and Al Kapone, star Terrence Howard has the skills. The rest of the songs heard on screen — most of which fall into the…
Going to the theater this summer has been like stepping into a time machine where your fondest childhood memories are retooled by cynics and sadists. Bewitched, Herbie: Fully Loaded, last week’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and now Bad News Bears are meant to be gobbled like comfort food by…
When rocker-turned-director Rob Zombie’s House of 1,000 Corpses was released in 2003, after years of bouncing around between studios afraid to put their name on a movie about a cartoonishly murderous family, it was anticipated as a hardcore gorefest. Instead, it was a plotless mess, with decent violence but nothing…
For those who like to keep their minds (and their Brunswicks) in the gutter, a screening of The Big Lebowski and a few lines of play at a downtown bowling alley should be just the thing this week. The 1998 movie by Ethan and Joel Coen (of Fargo fame) is,…
Chihuly. Michael De Marsche, president of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, has orchestrated the extravaganza Chihuly, a sprawling survey of the career of glass master Dale Chihuly. Working near Seattle, Chihuly is among the best-known glass artists of all time, right up there with Louis Comfort Tiffany and Paolo…
Roald Dahl’s inner child was evidently a contrary lad — precocious, dark-minded, contemptuous of adult supervision and fueled by a sense of justice that often proceeded via cruel whim. In Dahl’s twisty children’s stories, villains throw kids out of windows, beautiful women turn out to be hideous witches in disguise…
Since George Romero’s long-awaited Land of the Dead turned out to be a letdown, we’ll have to find our zombie-movie solace elsewhere. Thankfully, Romero’s been making movies for so long that not only has he inspired others to follow in his footsteps, but those others have begotten others still. Sam…
If Vince Vaughn puts any effort into what he’s doing, it doesn’t show, which is perhaps one of the benefits of always appearing to be hung over. The man probably has to check the bags under his eyes at the airport, and he’s about as in shape as a toddler’s…
British indie filmmaker Sally Potter, a former dancer, lyricist, and performance artist, clearly has a taste for adventure. In 1992 that led her to Orlando, a screen adaptation of the experimental Virginia Woolf novel about an Elizabethan nobleman who hangs around for 400 years, eventually morphing into a hip 20th-century…
If for no other reason, Happy Endings deserves its soft spot in our collective hearts for rescuing Tom Arnold from the why-are-they-now? scrap heap. The former Mr. Roseanne Barr plays Frank, a widower who falls for and sleeps with his son’s conniving would-be girlfriend Jude, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. And…
