Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s The City of Lost Children is a kind of crypto-Freudian fairy tale about a sinister mad scientist in a foggy harbor town who kidnaps children so he can steal their dreams. He also has philosophical arguments with a disembodied brain living in a tank of…
Put Charles Bronson into a nice Chanel pantsuit, then apply the right shade of lipstick, and he’d seem an awful lot like the avenging angel Sally Field plays in Eye for an Eye. Gee, maybe that is good ol’ Charlie up there. In any event, director John Schlesinger has given…
Wednesday January 10 Colorado dreamin’: Though official observance of the King holiday officially takes place Monday in Colorado, a number of events sponsored by a state commission–under the banner of Martin Luther King Jr.: Fulfilling the Dream–lead up to the actual January 15 anniversary. Today from 9 to 4, the…
You’ll want to run through Shake, Rattle and Roll, the Colorado History Museum’s–excuse the expression–“exhibit” on the 1950s. And then you’ll want to run away as fast as you can. To say that this show is a total disaster barely hints at how bad it really is. I can’t recall…
If you’re going to revive a period thriller as clunky and passionate as Dial “M” for Murder, for heaven’s sake don’t ignore the very elements that make it interesting–go for the noir! The road-show production of the classic 1950s murder mystery now at the Auditorium Theatre features TV and movie…
Jennifer Jason Leigh, a girlish wisp with huge eyes, has emerged as one of the movies’ most accomplished actresses on the strength of her fearless essays in depravity, which all go bravely against type. Her career credits include low-down prostitutes in Last Exit to Brooklyn and Miami Blues, a coke-addicted…
The foundation on which Terry Gilliam has built the exotic and impressive fantasy 12 Monkeys may seem awfully familiar–at first. For one thing, this paranoiac vision is partly set, again, in a grimy, post-apocalyptic future ruled by Orwellian slavemasters. For a second, it strenuously demonizes science and technology: The cackling…
Wednesday January 3 Feeling puckish: Though they are the last team on the totem pole in Denver’s major-league sport sweepstakes, the Colorado Avalanche pucksters take a back seat to no one. The ex-Nordiques from Quebec have swept onto Mile High ice for a fine season in the National Hockey League,…
The public made unprecedented expenditures on public art and public buildings last year in Denver. But you wouldn’t know it to look around. The biggest plum, both in terms of cost and lost opportunity, was Denver International Airport, born of the dreams of former mayor Federico Pena. The site plan…
Sometimes a play can leap through the centuries and land gracefully in our midst. But it takes a crack cast to handle antiquated language forms and old-fashioned sentiments. To work really well, a revival must speak some fundamental truths about the human condition. The Triumph of Love, an eighteenth-century farce…
The French loved him when America all but deserted him. But who cares what the French think? Now Jerry Lewis is enjoying a revival of public favor guaranteed to increase an already endless ego–fully displayed in the slick and (mostly) charming Damn Yankees. Even the death of his erstwhile sidekick…
The abundance of golden light flooding James Foley’s Two Bits lets you know right away that you’re in trouble. Nostalgia trouble. That light, which never lets up, is the same color as sap, and there’s nothing quite so sappy as a memory movie in which an aging man looks way,…
Mel Brooks has clearly lost a step in recent years. But before writing him off as the literally 2,000-year-old man, have a look at Dracula: Dead and Loving It. It’s a satire that has some of the old Brooksian flash and fizz. The Guinness Book of Records tells us there…
Wednesday December 27 Bored games: The most interminable part of the holidays begins right about now, when the tree begins to shed and the novelty of new bikes and Barbies begins to wear thin. But there are ways to prevent cabin fever from taking hold. For instance, there’s nothing like…
The distinction in Oliver Parker’s new film version of Othello is that Shakespeare’s tragic hero is being played for the first time on the screen by a black actor. Despite seeming out of his depth for much of the proceedings, Laurence Fishburne brings raw, lusty power to the great role,…
The four disparate filmmakers who contributed episodes to Four Rooms apparently have one thing in common: a nasty streak that won’t quit. Set in a down-at-the-heels hotel on New Year’s Eve and loosely linked by the presence of a scummy bellhop named Ted (Tim Roth), all the vignettes are resolutely…
BEST TEN OF 1995 1. The Usual Suspects. Bryan Singer’s dark, twisting crime thriller restores the old glory of film noir, then presses on into uncharted territory with Kevin Spacey, Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Pollak, Gabriel Byrne and Chazz Palminteri in tow. Best advice: See it twice. And look out for…
Wednesday December 20 Chicken feed: How does this sound for holiday fare that’s loud, boisterous, anarchic and silly? A bunch of parents and their kids show up for a play. Only instead of sitting and fidgeting, they get on stage and play the leading roles. At the Chicken Lips Comedy…
How lucky Robin Rule must be. No sooner had she moved her namesake gallery from the Siberia of an off-street spot at the Icehouse in Lodo to her new location at Broadway and 1st Avenue, across the street from the Mayan Theater than her new neighborhood was heralded in Denver’s…
The most important community theater arises out of a community’s need–and El Centro Su Teatro is a prime example of what the best community theater should be. Producing original plays in Spanish and English, Su Teatro draws on amateur and trained performers to give voice to the Hispanic community’s struggles,…
Most of the holiday shows now playing in Denver are secular pieces that capitalize on the season’s frenetic nostalgia but have no commitment to its meaning. But there is one authentic Christmas piece in town: Black Nativity at Eulipions. The play by poet Langston Hughes has a doubly emotional edge–a…
If you’re going to put a bearded lunatic wearing a suit made from banana leaves in your movie, the lunatic probably should be Robin Williams. He’s from another planet anyway, isn’t he? If you’re going to run a herd of elephants, rhinos and zebras down the main drag of a…
