Reviews, interviews, and festival coverage for Boulder’s only independent newspaper from 2014 to 2025.
On Sept. 1, 2013, Hayao Miyazaki, the imaginative creator of My Neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso, Spirited Away, and The Wind Rises, announced his retirement. Cameras flashed, and reporters asked questions. This wasn’t the first time the 72-year-old animator claimed he was stepping … Continue reading NEVER-ENDING MAN: HAYAO MIYAZAKI (終わらない人 宮崎駿)
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. —1 Corinthians 13: 11–12, King James Version Can randomness … Continue reading NEVER LOOK AWAY (WERK OHNE AUTOR)
All the best movies elicit our emotions—Roger Ebert famously called these movies “empathy machines”—but there is a fine line between an emotion earned and an emotion provoked. Movies that hopscotch across this line are what many dub “Oscar-bait” and the … Continue reading Big Emotions in Small Packages: 2019 Oscar Nominated Short Films
Meet Zain (Zain Al Rafeea), a 12-year-old boy incarcerated in a Beirut jail for stabbing—as he says—“a sonofabitch.” “You stabbed someone,” the judge clarifies, softening the young man’s testimony. “Yes,” Zain responds. “A sonofabitch.” Well, what else do you call … Continue reading CAPERNAUM (کفرناحوم)
Well, if you want to sing out, sing outAnd if you want to be free, be free.’Cause there’s a million things to beYou know that there are. —Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) It starts with music, a siren song if … Continue reading COLD WAR (ZIMNA WOJNA)
What does “becoming American” mean to you? Is it a process? A state of mind? An act of participation? When one becomes American, what’s more important: the destination or the journey? That’s both the title and the central theme behind … Continue reading Becoming American: An Immigration Film Series and Discussion
There are roughly three New Yorks … First, the New York of the man or woman who was born here … Second, there is the New York of the commuter … Third, there is the New York of the person … Continue reading THE WORLD BEFORE YOUR FEET
CU-Boulder’s International Film Series isn’t just Boulder’s first art-house series; it also features one of the best programs out there. From international sensations to genre appreciations, award-winners, and retrospectives, IFS offers the Boulder moviegoing faithful an opportunity to see the … Continue reading Cinema Without Borders: Previewing the 2019 Spring International Film Series
The infamous Beale Street belongs to the city of Memphis, Tennessee, but every city has a Beale Street. So claimed writer James Baldwin, born and raised in Harlem, New York, on the very streets where he set his seminal 1974 … Continue reading IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK
Michael J. Cinema 
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