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October 1- 7, 2009
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(500) Days of Summer
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays L.A. greeting-card writer Tom, whose heart gets kicked around by free-spirited co-worker Summer (Zooey Deschanel). As Tom sifts through memories of his time with Summer, the movie clicks onto different days, out of order, letting us eavesdrop on one vignette or conversation or argument after another. Days plays some fun structural mind games. Deschanel is captivating, and the film has an easygoing, inquisitive spirit. Rated PG-13 (sexual material and language). At Starz. — Michael Phillips
9
This animated feature throws viewers headlong into a post-apocalyptic universe where life has come down to the vicious combat between machines resembling metallic dinosaurs and a tiny band of survivors. Director Shane Acker’s fantasy comes from his superb 2004 short subject. The feature-length expansion does not feel artistically compromised or interested in pandering to a young audience. But while Acker’s craftsmanship is impressive, it’s undermined by a misjudged degree of grinding peril. Still, the film cannot be dismissed. Rated PG-13 (violence and scary images). At Century and Flatiron. — Michael Phillips
A Woman in Berlin
Set in 1945 during the Red Army invasion of Berlin, women are victims of rape and devastation; one of them is Anonyma (Nina Hoss), who had been a journalist and photographer. In her desperation, she decides to look for an officer who can protect her. She meets a Russian officer Andrej (Evgeny Sidikhin) — an encounter that develops into a complex symbiotic relationship that forces them to remain enemies until the bitter end. Not Rated. At Starz. — Denver Film Society
Bright Star
See full screen review on page 38. Rated R. At Esquire.
The Burning Plain
Charlize Theron once again plays a damaged woman running from her past. But storytelling tricks make this an intriguing outing for her, with a cast that includes fellow Oscar winner Kim Basinger and John Corbett. The film is written and directed by Guillermo Arriaga, who was the screenwriter for the critically acclaimed films Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel. Burning Plain has all the plot and character trickery of Arriaga’s earlier works but none of the emotion. Rated R (sexuality, nudity and language). At Chez Artisite. — Roger Moore
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Fairly inventive and exceedingly manic, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs comes from the 1978 picture book by Judi and Ron Barrett. Inventor Flint (voiced by Bill Hader) perfects a machine that turns water into food. But things get out of hand, and the food keeps coming in obesity-epidemic portions. Crazy doesn’t always equal funny, and the gigantism of this 3-D offering’s second half puts a damper on your enjoyment. But this film wasn’t made for you; it was made for easily distracted 9-year-olds who’ll probably love all the sight gags. Rated PG (brief mild language). At Century, Colony Square, Twin Peaks and Flatiron. — Michael Phillips
District 9
The premise: An enormous UFO descended from the sky 20 years ago, hovered over Johannesburg and stayed there. Then humans got curious and opened it up, and out spilled a million-plus alien creatures, leading to an immigration crisis. This film, shot like a documentary from the future, packs such a terrific central idea that even its flaws can’t stop the train. In its first hour it barrels along with the velocity of a new classic; as it settles for being a good addition to the venerable aliens-come-calling genre, you feel a slight letdown. But that first half? Nice. Rated R (bloody violence and pervasive language). At Flatiron. — Michael Phillips
Fame
One’s response to this happy, PG-rated remake, which stands in stark contrast to the R-rated pre-High School Musical original, probably depends on your personal relationship to the old version. The newer version, with a cast that includes Debbie Allen and Kelsey Grammer, has a sweet spirit and offers only one true moment of inadvertent camp: a (lame) finale featuring an African dance routine completely at odds with all the white bread we’ve just been served. Rated PG (thematic material including teen drinking, a sexual situation and language). At Flatiron, Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips
 Harry Potter and the Half
Blood Prince
This meticulously atmospheric, wonderfully acted Potter adventure lands happily — broodingly, but happily — near the top of the series heap. As the concerns of novelist J.K. Rowling’s characters gravitate toward matters of the heart and the hormones, the Potter films are leaving childhood behind. Yet the friendship of the central trio — Harry (Daniel Radcliffe); Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) — remains the key to the magic. Audience familiarity, in this case, breeds nothing but contentment. Rated PG (scary images, some violence, language and mild sensuality). At Flatiron. — Michael Phillips
Il Divo
Giulio Andreotti (Toni Servillo), variously nicknamed The Divine Giulio, Little Caesar, Beelezebub and Mr. Italy, was the uncrowned king of postwar Italian politics. Between 1972 and 1992 he was Prime Minister seven times and eventually named Senator for Life — but he was also famously accused of and tried for collusion with the mafia. Writer/director Paolo Sorrentino’s rip-roaring biopic is chockfull of colorful characters and sinister deaths: machine-gun ambushes, poisoned coffee in a “safe” jail cell, a plastic bag over the head, and more. Not Rated. At International Film Series. — Denver Film Society
The Informant!
In this deliciously deadpan comedy from director Steven Soderbergh, Matt Damon gets a chance to work his sly comic chops in the role of a biochemist who becomes a corporate whistle-blower. Based on Kurt Eichenwald’s exhaustive nonfiction chronicle, the film is both outlandish and subtle. Damon, beefed up and grinning underneath a fake mustache and rug, gets his character just right and demonstrates once again what a fine actor he is. Rated R. At Century, Twin Peaks, Flatiron and Colony Square. — Michael Phillips
Inglourious Basterds
A queasy historical do-over, Quentin Tarantino’s new film has been described as a grindhouse version of Valkyrie; a rhapsody dedicated to the cinema’s powers of persuasion; and a showcase for Austrian-born character actor Christoph Waltz, who waltzes off with the performance honors as a suavely vicious Nazi colonel. All true. Tarantino’s revenge fantasy recasts the iconography and mythic cruelties of Sergio Leone’s Westerns as the stuff of World War II history — not the history we know, but an alternate-reality version. Rated R (strong graphic violence, language and brief sexuality). At Flatiron, Century and Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips
I Sell the Dead
In I Sell the Dead, 19th century justice has finally caught up with two of the craftiest grave robbers in town. With only a few hours to go before his date with the guillotine, body-snatcher Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan / Lord of the Rings, Lost) tells his life story to the peculiar Father Francis Duffy (Ron Perlman / Hellboy, The City of Lost Children). Before long, Arthur spills the beans on how he got started in the grim corpse-peddling business with seasoned ghoul Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden / Wendigo The Last Winter, Habit). As the whiskey flows Arthur’s tales get stranger and stranger. From their graveyard discoveries of vampires and zombies to tales of vicious gang rivalries with the infamous House of Murphy, Arthur’s confessions are the stuff of legend! Whether pillaging in fog-drenched graveyards or plotting on blood-soaked coast lines, Grimes and Blake leave no graves unturned. Their colorful and peculiar history is one filled with adventure, horror, and mayhem that threaten to drag all involved down into the very graves they’re trying to pilfer. Not Rated. At Starz. — Denver Film Society
Jennifer’s Body
Striving for horror, comedy and anti-mean-girl empowerment, Jennifer’s Body wants it all. Yet the tone wavers, the direction’s slackly indecisive and visually drab, and in the middle of it is a thinly conceived antagonist played by Megan Fox, a pretty bad actress. When Fox’s sexually experienced but insecure character becomes the victim of a Satanic ritual conducted by a traveling rock band, her garden-variety nastiness becomes something else. Rated R (sexuality, bloody violence, language and brief drug use). At Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips
Joe (1970)
Directed by John Avildsen, with Peter Boyle, Dennis Patrick, Susan Sarandon (1970). When a hardhat bigot meets up with an upper-class ad executive mayhem ensues when he discovers his new-found friend wasn’t joking when he confides in him that he just killed his daughter’s drug-dealing hippie boyfriend. When the daughter discovers what her father has done, she runs away, setting off a chain of events in which the two men decide to wreak havoc in Greenwich Village in New York City. Joe marked the film debut of future Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon (Dead Man Walking). Not Rated. At the Boulder Public Library. — BPL Film Program
John Soane: British Architect, American Legacy
This film shows in its examination of the legacy of Sir John Soane (1753-1837), an English architect of rare genius whose influence on a generation of America’s foremost architects is profound. This film investigates both the influence of antiquity on Soane, following in his Grand Tour footsteps through Rome and Sicily, as well as the ways his stripped-down classical style examination of the legacy of Sir John Soane (1753-1837), an English architect of rare genius who helped guide the American architects out of the strictures of Modernism. Not Rated. At Starz. — Denver Film Society
Julie & Julia
Writer-director Nora Ephron adapts and intertwines two books: Julia Child’s My Life in France and Julie Powell’s Julie & Julia. The latter grew out of Powell’s online experiment, a year spent cooking and blogging her way through the seminal Child volume Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It may not make for great cinema, but you go to a movie like this for the sauces and stews, and for the considerable pleasure of seeing (and listening to) Meryl Streep’s drolly exuberant performance as Child. Amy Adams is also very good as Powell. Rated PG-13 (brief strong language and some sensuality). At Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips
The Last Poets: Made in Amerikkka
The Last Poets: Made in Amerikkka captures the Last Poets in their element where the narrative unfolds amidst the backdrop of a special 40th Anniversary show in France where five of the seven remaining living members of the group are reunited for a one-time performance for the ages. Not Rated. At Starz. — Denver Film Society
Le Combat Dans L’ile
Romy Schneider’s marriage to rich factory owner’s son Jean-Louis Trintignant has its rough side: his frequent absences for unexplained reasons, frightening outbursts of insane jealousy, and — her latest shocking discovery — a carefully wrapped anti-tank bazooka in the hall closet. However, there’s his friend to confide in, that warm and friendly pacifist, artisanal printer Henri Serre (Jim of Jules and Jim). All too little known today, Le Combat Dans L’ile subtly evokes a divided marriage — not unusual in French films — and a divided nation — but not estranged as seen in the then-dominant Nouvelle Vague. Alain Cavalier’s first major film (he’d previously been a Malle assistant) exhibits an assurance of tone and pacing that make this a uniquely gripping, intricate triangle-drama/thriller. Not Rated. At Starz. — Denver Film Society
Love Happens
See full screen review on page 38. Rated PG-13. At Flatiron, Century, Twin Peaks and Colony Square.
Medicine for Melancholy
Medicine for Melancholy is nothing more or less than the story of a man and a woman spending 24 hours together. It has no other agenda, which is part of its charm. Haven’t we all spent some interesting time together with a stranger, talking a little about our lives, sharing a certain communion, with no certainty that we will ever see them again? Micah and Joanne are African Americans in their late 20s, who wake up next to each other in a bed in an expensive home on San Francisco’s Nob Hill. They are hung over. They don’t know each other’s names. She wants to go home and forget. He persuades her to have breakfast. In a perhaps symbolic walk across a hill into a less posh neighborhood, he tries to cheer her up. It becomes clear that in a city with a 7 percent black population, he sees her as intriguing: A single, hip black woman in what he describes as the "indie world." Not Rated. At International Film Series. — IFS
My Cousin Vinny
The film that coined the term “Academy-Award-Winner Marisa Tomei” also stars Joe Pesci as a brash New York lawyer who, in his first case, must defend his cousin in a mistaken identity murder trial deep in the heart of Alabama. Not Rated. Free showing at Starz. — Denver Film Society
My One & Only
Set in the early 1950s, My One and Only is a minimally factual account of George Hamilton’s improbable upbringing. It stars Renee Zellweger as the young actor-to-be’s mother, a reckless, madcap figure of glamour. Director Richard Loncraine’s diversion has more on the ball than it initially lets on: For a while it’s dominated by Zellweger’s archly conscientious attempts at period style. Gradually, however, the actress leaves the play-acting behind her and settles into her role. Rated PG-13 (sexual content and language). At Colony Square. — Michael Phillips
No Impact Man
Colin Beavan is a non-fiction writer and blogger from New York City who is noted for recording his and his family's attempts to live a zero-impact lifestyle for one whole year. The goal was to live without many of the common comforts of an American life — electricity, processed foods, paper products, motorized transportation — to see how low he could go with his impact on the environment. Joined by his wife Michelle Conlin, a writer for Business Week, and their young daughter, Beavan took to riding his bike, composting his trash and only eating foods grown within a local radius. Not Rated. At International Film Series. — IFS
Professor Crunch & The Daffies
Join Professor Crunch, Chloe, Urchin and the Daffies on this musical adventure into the world of science. When the Professor’s experiment goes haywire, the Daffies are brought to our world and we learn about our mysterious world along with them.
Not Rated. For ages 8 - 12. Free showing at Starz. — Denver Film Society
Rat Trap
Adoor Gopalakrishnan is India’s most distinguished contemporary filmmaker, and Rat Trap is his most acclaimed film. Made in 1981, it won several national and international awards including the Sutherland Trophy and the prestigious British Film Institute Award. It is one of the key films of the Indian New Wave. Remarkable for its focus on characterization and detail, Rat Trap is set in rural Kerala, in southern India. Its story concerns Unni, the last male heir of a feudal and decaying joint family. His inability to accept the socio-economic changes that are transforming the world outside result in his gradual withdrawal into a metaphorical rat trap sprung from his own isolation and paranoia. The decline is vividly told, with color and music playing a significant part in the film’s thematic development. Not Rated. At International Film Series. — IFS
The September Issue
This easygoing, entertaining documentary is about a triumph of advertising and frippery over rational thinking: the September 2007 issue of Vogue, hundreds of pages long, fraught with backstage machinations and editorial mishaps. Anna Wintour is the star of this show, in theory. Meryl Streep played a fictionalized version of Vogue’s high priestess in The Devil Wears Prada. The real-life Wintour is fearsome, wily and a little depressing. The true star is Vogue’s longtime creative director Grace Coddington, Wintour’s contemporary, ally and eternal adversary. Rated PG-13 (brief strong language). At Chez Artiste. — Michael Phillips
To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
Directed by Robert Mulligan, with Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, Robert Duvall (1962). A lawyer in a racially divided Alabama town in the 1930s agrees to defend a young black man who is accused of raping a white woman. Many of the townspeople try to get the lawyer to pull out of the trial, but he decides to continue. Based on Nelle Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book of 1960. This book has been frequently challenged by parents and groups who object to either the language or the way in which race is represented. In fact, the Committee on Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association listed the novel as being among the 10 most frequently challenged books. Not Rated. At the Boulder Public Library. — BPL Film Program
Unmistaken Child
The film’s central character is Tenzin Zopa, the tenderhearted young acolyte whose life, since the age of 7, has been devoted to serving Geshe Lama. Upon his master’s death, the grieving Zopa is instructed by the Dalai Lama himself to seek out the reincarnated boy, a task he feels unsuited for. How can a mere follower, he asks, spot the divine? On one level, Unmistaken Child is a moving coming-of-age story in which a shy student matures into a teacher. Not Rated. At International Film Series. — IFS
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