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May 14-20, 2009
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A Wink and a Smile
An intoxicating mix of private thoughts and public behavior, A Wink and a Smile exposes more than the human body by putting gender, power, sexuality and social identity under the glittery spotlight, as it follows the lives of 10 “ordinary” women who do something extraordinary — learn the art of burlesque dancing and striptease. Through their adventures, we see how a homemaker, a reporter, a doctor, an opera singer, a taxidermist and a college student, join the American cultural revival of burlesque, as it moves from fringe fascination to mainstream obsession, engaging a world where performance art and showgirl spectacle, music, theater and sensuality crash into over-the-top glamour — a world where many want to go, but very few dare. Not rated. At Starz. — Denver Film Society
Earth
It would be Pollyannish to pretend that this documentary is without its problems, but the bottom line is, it shouldn’t be missed. What it does well is so remarkable that by the time the credits roll you likely won’t want it to end. This film is the direct descendant of Planet Earth, the astonishing 11-hour BBC series that went to more than 200 locations in 64 countries. In keeping with the Disney approach, the nature photography this time around is focused on the trials of three different animal families: polar bears, elephants and whales. Rated G. At Flatiron, Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks. — Kenneth Turan
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
If you look up the word “typecasting” in the dictionary, you’ll find Matthew McConaughey’s smirk affixed to this film’s title. Nonetheless, this Lothario-learns-a-lesson comedy offers a few guilty chuckles. Riffing on A Christmas Carol, the script concerns a caddish fashion photographer (McConaughey) who spends his days lining up femmes to be bagged. This snake’s reckoning is a supernatural job, arranged by the ghost of his late uncle (Michael Douglas). Jennifer Garner is the love interest. Rated PG-13 (sexual content throughout, some language and a drug reference). At Flatiron, Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips
Guest of Cindy Sherman
It’s New York City in the early 1990s. Cindy Sherman is the press-wary luminary of contemporary American art. Everyone wants an interview; nobody gets one — with one exception: Paul Hasegawa-Overacker (H-O), the overactive mouthpiece of public-access TV’s GalleryBeat. They meet, they flirt, they soon cohabitate. But Sherman’s superstar status begins to denigrate H-O. A frustrated artist himself, he is always listed at Manhattan art events as her unnamed guest, never a person in his own right. In Guest of Cindy Sherman, H-O, with codirector Tom Donahue, turns the lens upon himself. The documentary follows the odd couple in some of their most intimate moments, from infatuation and romance to its demise as his male ego takes a bruising. In an irony undoubtedly not lost on H-O, it is in the candid moments with Sherman and the snippets of his interviews with her esteemed contemporaries — including Robert Longo and painter-director Julian Schnabel (Diving Bell and the Butterfly, SDFF 30), whose disdain for H-O’s guerilla filmmaking style is palpable —that his story finds its contextual grounding. (Look for a cameo appearance by Elton John’s partner David Furnish, who empathizes with H-O’s role as the overlooked sidekick to a major celebrity.) Although Cindy Sherman has disassociated herself from the film, her onscreen presence shines in the footage H-O shot over a span of 15 years. In particular, her intriguing explanation of the themes in several of her most famous photographic self-portraits wlll engage art lovers, even as the psychological implications of male-female role reversal in a supposedly postfeminist society reveal themselves. Not rated. At Starz. — Denver Film Society
Hannah Montana: The Movie
Miley Cyrus, 16, stars in a big-screen expansion of the Disney Channel TV series in which Ms. Cyrus splits herself in two, trying to be both down-home Miley Stewart from Tennessee and, in disguise, Hannah Montana, L.A. rock star adored by millions, with only a dirty-blond wig to conceal her identity. Miley/Hannah must save her hometown of Crowley Corners, Tenn., from a developer (Barry Bostwick) who wants to build a mall and ruin the scenery. Alas, this isn’t a very funny film. Millions of kids will disagree, but they deserve better. Rated G. At Flatiron. — Michael Phillips
 Is Anybody There?
This finely drawn British drama is propelled by another of Michael Caine’s unforgettable screen portraits. Caine plays an aging magician struggling to keep hold of his dignity and his mind in the face of old age. He has been packed off to an old-age home in a small seaside town, where he discovers an unexpected friendship with an inquisitive but pensive 10-year-old (Bill Milner) whose family runs and lives in the house. PG-13 (language including sexual references and some disturbing images). At Colony Square and Mayan. — Betsy Sharkey
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
When notable narrative director Scott Hicks picked up an HD camera to shoot some footage of celebrated composer Philip Glass, he had no intention of turning it into a feature-length documentary. Yet after capturing so much insightful footage and realizing that Glass and his family and friends were up to the task, that is exactly what happened. With Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts, Hicks has delivered an intimate, illuminating glimpse into the life of one of America’s most fascinating artists. The film’s present-day footage follows Glass as he works on his Eighth Symphony and also prepares to present the operatic spectacle Barbarians at the Gate. But his current duties don’t stop there. He’s also busy scoring Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream in addition to several more films. Glass is an obsessive workaholic who takes his work with him even when he goes on vacation (to the disappointment of his third wife, Holly, who expresses her feelings in one of the film’s most unexpectedly revealing moments). Meanwhile, Hicks visits close friends and family members, who recount Glass’s life story with clarity and humor. But the film really belongs to Glass himself, whose pragmatic approach to creation is daunting and inspiring. To him, one must show up every single day and put in the time to create work that is worthy of preservation. To remain focused, he performs many different spiritual and physical acts of meditation and exercise. Glass often feels more like a home movie than an outright documentary, proving that Hicks is as adept at shooting real life as he is at filming screenplays. Not rated. At Starz. — Denver Film Society
Monsters vs. Aliens
DreamWorks’ animated 3-D feature is blessed with a high-concept title and Seth Rogen’s serenely dense line readings in the role of a genetically altered tomato gone wrong. But much of the project went wrong somewhere, along with the tomato. The script piles on the mayhem and forgets the funny. To add insult to a paucity of jokes, the look of the picture is cold and oddly flat. This story of imprisoned monsters and rampaging aliens centers on a woman (voiced by Reese Witherspoon) who is creamed by a meteor that turns her into a giant. Rated PG (sci-fi action, some crude humor and mild language). At Flatiron and Century. — Michael Phillips
My Winnipeg
Have you ever wanted to relive your childhood and do things differently? Guy Maddin (The Saddest Music in the World) casts B-movie icon Ann Savage as his domineering mother in an attempt to answer that question in My Winnipeg, a hilariously wacky and profoundly touching goodbye letter to his childhood hometown. A documentary (or “docu-fantasia” as Maddin proclaims) that inventively blends local and personal history with surrealist images and metaphorical myths, the film covers everything from the fire at the local park which lead to a frozen lake of distressed horse heads to pivotal and factually heightened scenes from Maddin’s own childhood, all laced with a startling emotional honesty. My Winnipeg is Maddin’s most personal film and a truly unique cinematic experience, winning the best Canadian film at the Toronto International Film Festival and the opening night selection of the Berlin Film Festival's Forum. Not rated. At Starz. — Denver Film Society
17 Again
This halfhearted fantasy is about a former high school basketball star given the chance to return to high school and infiltrate his kids’ classes under a transfer-student guise. Matthew Perry plays the older version of the ex-jock, with tween idol Zac Efron starring as the younger version. The movie, which makes high school seem only slightly less grim than Lord of the Flies, tries to deal with teen sexuality and social pressures, but it’s the same old song, sung out of key. Rated PG-13 (language, some sexual material and teen partying). At Flatiron, Century and Colony Square. — Michael Phillips
The Soloist
In this film based on a true-life story, Los Angeles Times writer Steve Lopez (played by Robert Downey Jr.) discovers street musician Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a former Juilliard student plagued by undiagnosed schizophrenia, leading to a series of influential columns and an eventful relationship between the two men. You couldn’t ask for better actors; the real-life characters, however, deserved a more dimensional screenplay. Rated PG-13 (thematic elements, some drug use, and language). At Flatiron, Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips
Star Trek
See full screen review on page 38. Rated PG-13. At Flatiron, Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks.
State of Play
Like Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, State of Play compresses a British television miniseries into a stand-alone American thriller and does a pretty good job of it. Russell Crowe plays a star newspaper journalist pursuing strands of a conspiracy involving a shadowy private defense firm. The cast also includes Helen Mirren, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams and Robin Wright Penn. This is a sleek, reliable Hollywood package, wrapped in a mournful last hurrah for print investigative journalism. Rated PG-13 (some violence, language including sexual references, and brief drug content). At Flatiron, Century and Colony Square. — Michael Phillips
Sugar
This rich and moving baseball movie follows a 19-year-old from the Dominican Republic, making his way to Arizona, then Iowa, in the employ of the (fictional) Kansas City Knights farm system. What happens to this kid, Miguel “Sugar” Santos (Algenis Perez Soto), feels like the stuff of life. In America we tend to like our baseball stories the way we like our immigration stories: triumphant, reassuringly lucky. A little adversity, a lot of will, a mound of happiness. Sugar has all that, but not in the expected order. Rated R (language, some sexuality and brief drug use). At Chez Artiste. — Michael Phillips
Sunshine Cleaning
Amy Adams and Emily Blunt play sisters who start up an unlicensed crime-scene cleanup business. They’re haunted by the suicide death of their mother; for them the biohazard removal biz is a way of processing their grief, and bringing to survivors the comfort they themselves seek. Certain narrative events are more about dramatic convenience than the mess of real life. But it helps to have actresses as vibrant as Adams and Blunt around. Director Christine Jeffs loosens the plotting as best she can, letting the interactions breathe. Rated R (language, disturbing images, some sexuality and drug use). At Mayan. — Michael Phillips
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
This fourth X-Men picture ties for weakest X-Men picture with No. 3. Here and there you get what you want from an X-Men prequel, thanks to the irrepressible Hugh Jackman and several other members of the cast, including Liev Schreiber as Wolverine’s nemesis, Sabretooth. But there’s a rote quality to the proceedings, and director Gavin Hood shoots the action in such a way as to minimize the performers’ abilities to perform it. Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of action and violence, and some partial nudity). At Flatiron, Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips
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