It’s a rare depressed 17-year-old that can express that angst in a subtle and compelling novel. John Kennedy Toole was not yet employing his outrageous sense of humor when he wrote this (he later wrote A Confederacy of Dunces), which makes this a bit of a dismal, Salinger-esque read. I’m confident that Holden Caulfield fans…

I can’t think of a worthy complement for this film. It’s like finding a flower growing on the moon. The lives of several homeless people living in railroad tunnels beneath New York are documented without an ounce of hype. It’s a minor miracle that it got made at all. At first I didn’t really believe…

I recall enjoying this the first time I saw it, and I enjoyed it again, but differently. It’s a true story about musicians, so it hits two of my soft spots. The strange thing is that I’ve been watching so many episodes of Six Feet Under that I’ve completely identified actress Rachel Griffiths with her…

This is just a bookmark for myself, rather than a full review, because I have some projects afoot that are demanding my time. I will record my strongest impression. Listening to a 230-year-old Mozart symphony that I’ve heard many times on the radio somehow made me realize that this music was composed not so long…

Another opportunity to see a world-class pianist play mind-bendingly difficult pieces came our way this Sunday afternoon when Van Cliburn silver medalist Yakov Kasman took to the stage at CSU’s Edna Rizley Griffin concert hall. We chose seats with a view of the pianist’s face rather than his hands this time, and were taken aback…

This didn’t do it for me. I may receive death threats from my friends for saying so, but it seemed to me like it couldn’t decide whether to be satire or drama, and just came off hokey. It’s too bad, because I liked the sci-fi western concept, and was ready to go with it. We…

We endure about fifteen minutes before turning it off. The good spirit behind the lowbrow humor in Shaolin Soccer was totally absent, leaving behind a flashy but ultimately ugly and degrading spectacle.

I was initially put off by the too-blatant attempts to be self-referential, more of the same stuff that didn’t work in The Opposite of Sex. If you can forgive the film for that, though, this one does manage to convey a fairly intense sense of capriciousness without being excessively implausible, as well as some humorous…

A deserved classic. For the situation comedy format it manages to not be entirely goofy, although suspension of disbelief is definitely a requirement. As a gender-bending film it has held up remarkably well with time, though the social commentary is dated much of it still works – a tribute to a well-written script. It’s the…

This documentary succeeds in all sorts of ways. It calmly debunks many misperceptions about quadriplegics and the sport of murderball (or quad rugby), then goes on to involve us in the lives of two teams leading up to the 2004 Paralymipics. The characters are tough and aggressive, and I think the filmmakers must have been…