Reviews, interviews, and festival coverage for Boulder’s only independent newspaper from 2014 to 2025.
If you’ve seen a hundred westerns, then you’ve seen it a hundred times: a mysterious figure rides into town looking for someone. With guns drawn, frontier justice is enforced, the two characters’ shared backstory bubbles up to the surface, and, … Continue reading Nathan and David Zellner on DAMSEL
Wanting for my happily-ever-after, I lowered my defenses, forgetting the first lesson I was taught: That I was brought into this world to be abandoned; that I am irrevocably alone. —Mary Shelley It’s been 200 years since the publication of Frankenstein; … Continue reading MARY SHELLEY
This is not based on a true story; this is a true story.” So proclaims the title cards that open American Animals—a documentary/narrative hybrid that is almost too good to be true. And it is true, but in a circuitous manner. … Continue reading AMERICAN ANIMALS
Known as “the third genius,” Harold Lloyd did not have the same background in vaudeville as Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton; yet, he ended up making more movies than both of them combined. Lloyd started his career as a Chaplin … Continue reading THE FRESHMAN
Like most love stories, this one begins at the movies. London, 1971: A young actor goes to see the latest release, A Clockwork Orange, and is transfixed. The garish colors, the violence, the sex, the terror, Malcolm McDowell’s theatrical performance; the young … Continue reading FILMWORKER
Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke, in one of his best performances) is having a crisis of faith. The parish pastor of New York’s 250-year-old First Reformed church—once a stopover on the Underground Railroad, now jokingly called a gift shop—watches with detachment … Continue reading FIRST REFORMED
On May 14, 2018, Tom Wolfe—one of America’s most exuberant writers—died at the age of 88. Among his litany of good works, Wolfe penned The Right Stuff, effectively coining a phrase while summing up the spirit of the idolized American … Continue reading Robert Mitchum
RBG, from documentarians from Julie Cohen and Betsy West, opens with images of Washington D.C. accompanied by sound bites from conservative talk radio and one American president casually dismissing a Supreme Court justice as vile and disgusting. “Witch” and “zombie” … Continue reading RBG
What good does it, writing about classic films? If it’s covering an undiscovered gem or a movie never properly released, that’s one thing. But to cover a classic, a movie that has withstood the baptism of time, has been written … Continue reading How We Got Here
Michael J. Cinema 
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