The bi-coastal film pod continues in 2015! In New York, Village Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl, along with Voice film critic Stephanie Zacharek, connect via the magic of the Internet with LA Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson to discuss the nominations for this year’s Academy Awards, announced on January 15…
Jesus talked a lot about loving the underdog, the meek, the oppressed and the poor. He argued God is love and told his disciple to turn the other cheek. Jesus’s life ended in violence and bloodshed from which he could have liberated himself, but he chose not to fight –…
Anyone who loves Michael Mann movies — or even just the idea of Michael Mann movies — accepts that film style is a language and something more, a way of thinking, feeling and looking that goes beyond basic plotting, dialogue or character motivation. I can tell you pretty much everything…
In Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) — an astoundingly talented marksman credited with over 160 confirmed kills in Iraq — runs into a fellow veteran at a mechanic’s shop between deployments. The soldier shows Kyle an artificial leg and thanks him for saving his life…
Forget its generic title, its breakup setup and its indie-standard Brooklyn walk-and-talks: Writer/director Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior is the freshest comedy of life and love since Obvious Child. Hilarious and heartbroken, Akhavan stars as Shirin, a bisexual Iranian-American video artist just bounced from her lover’s Gowanus apartment. (Relish the memory…
Brilliant.If you have any interest in modernism or fine craft — even if you aren’t particularly interested in jewelry — you’ll find something to marvel over at the Denver Art Museum’s winter blockbuster Brilliant: Cartier in the 20th Century. The show is a visual marathon, with so many things included…
Emerson argued that each flourish and tendril of a work of art has its exact corollary in the mind of the artist, that creative expression is always, in its way, a sort of autobiography: Want to know the person? Look at her works. But Ralph Waldo never lived to see…
Here’s the pipsqueak who has hauled himself up into a sharp-dressed leading man. Here’s the comic who’s boundlessly inventive in his swearing but also suave and commanding in pursuit of love, the motormouth horndog who yawps about like a puppy on fire but can melt your mother’s heart with his…
This Friday, January 16, marks the start of the Colorado State Patrol’s new application process. But to get people interested in the idea of a job in law enforcement, the CSP has created a short promotional video highlighting the women in state patrol — and the fifteen-second video just started…
The Emerging Filmmakers Project got its start at dozen years ago at the Bug Theater, and was honored with one of the initial MasterMind Awards. One of the EFP’s winning events was the EFPalooza Film Festival,which returns to the Bug on Thursday after a several-year hiatus; more than forty local…
Joel and Ethan Coen, the beloved filmmaking duo, have been gathering a cult following with their unique blend of darkly comic — or just flat-out dark or comic — films for over thirty years. From Fargo to O Brother, Where Art Thou? to No Country For Old Men and The…
Surreal French filmmaker Leos Carax is not a household name — but his last film, Holy Motors, was an accidental accessible art-house hit in 2013. Well, as accessible as a film with a scene featuring Eva Mendes being ogled by an underground troll sporting a real erection onscreen can be…
Describing Ava DuVernay’s quietly remarkable Selma to a friend, I caught myself referring to the civil-rights era as a historical event, a thing of the past, and then backtracked. The killing of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice at the hands of police officers — not to mention the…
Paul Thomas Anderson was making serious movies long before he started making “serious” movies, ponderous works of certified art like There Will Be Blood and The Master. His earliest pictures, like Hard Eight and Boogie Nights, were wily, imperfect, vibrating with life. They were serious without advertising their sincerity, and…
Brown pelicans are talented anglers, able to plunge into the sea from tremendous heights and snap up fish with such effortless precision that it’s no wonder fishermen have long tracked them to find schools of sardines. And they are far from domestic, born far from human civilization and driven by…
Brilliant. If you have any interest in modernism or fine craft — even if you aren’t particularly interested in jewelry — you’ll find something to marvel over at the Denver Art Museum’s winter blockbuster Brilliant: Cartier in the 20th Century. The show is a visual marathon, with so many things…
All you need to know about Taken 3 is that Liam Neeson survives an explosive car crash — twice. Director Olivier Megaton even rewinds the second blast to show us how his hero escaped. It still doesn’t make sense. But who cares. The Taken franchise is rooted in implausibilities, specifically…
We all understand the idea of 3D: When you wear funny glasses, it looks like something is jumping off the screen at you. But the Downtown Aquarium is taking the concept one step beyond, with its new 4D theater. Along with the 3D glasses, movie-goers are treated to smells, splashes…
The last decade of film programming in Denver has done wonders to fill the gaps in any cineaste’s lexicon. And with the 2013 arrival of the Alamo Drafthouse in Littleton, with its focus not only on first-run films but special repertory programming as well, many underrepresented genres have returned to…
For decades, fans of Stephen King’s The Shining have made a pilgrimage to Estes Park to visit the Stanley Hotel, the famous inspiration for the Overlook Hotel in King’s horror novel, and though the Stanley embraces its pop-culture connection and is overflowing with spooky hauntings and creepiness, one physical manifestation…
As the year in movie-going draws to a close — and as critics busy themselves drawing up lists and handing out awards — it seems time at last to look ahead. Here are the ten films to get excited about in the year to come. 1. Jauja (directed by Lisandro…
Editor’s note: After canceling the nationwide release of The Interview, due to threats by hackers angry at the movie’s sentiment toward North Korea, Sony Pictures Entertainment — perhaps after being scolded by President Obama — decided to screen the film on a limited basis. In Denver, it has been shown…
