(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) As modern filmmakers continually prove, computer-generated images (CGI) can be a double-edged keystroke. On the positive side, technological advances in cinematic special effects grant directors the freedom of limitless imagination, allowing inventive artists to create the impossible and ingenious at the click of a button. The flipside, however, is…

(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) At his last Wimbledon hurrah before retiring for a cushy job as a club tennis pro (where randy old ladies eagerly await his instruction), underachieving has-been Peter Colt (Paul Bettany) discovers his killer instinct after falling in love with feisty American player Lizzie Bradbury (Kirsten Dunst). In Wimbledon, all-night…

Though many focused on its racy, NC-17-rated sexual explicitness, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers is surprisingly lacking in pulse-pounding passion. Admittedly, there’s a modicum of sensuality in the relationship shared by Matthew (Matthew Pitt), a student studying abroad (and perhaps fleeing his overbearing father?) in 1968 Paris, and Isabelle (Eva Green) and Theo (Louis Garrel), twin…

“Demented forever!” is the rallying cry of Cecil B. Demented’s renegade cinematic terrorists, and while director John Waters’ latest film doesn’t totally make up for the disappointingly stale Pecker, it does prove that the director hasn’t completely forsaken his own deranged moviemaking urges. Cecil B. Demented (a hilariously over-the-top Stephen Dorff) is an independent filmmaker…

Shockingly obvious filmmaking from a usually eccentric and unpredictable iconoclast, Pecker is arguably director John Waters’ worst film. A transparent, laugh-free parable about Waters’ own rise to fame, the film charts the unlikely superstardom of Edward Furlong’s titular schlub, an aspiring Baltimore photographer whose life becomes front-page news after his photos of his family, friends,…

The Girl Next Door is essentially Risky Business for the 21st century, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. The story of a dorky high school class president (Emile Hirsch’s Matthew) who finds love, happiness and self-confidence by dating the porn star (Elisha Cuthbert’s Danielle) who’s housesitting next door, it’s a mixed-up fantasy in…

Criminal is a second-generation photocopy of a David Mamet cryptogram, and like most cinematic reproductions, it’s an overly familiar, less distinct version of its predecessors. Faithfully adapted from Fabián Bielinsky’s 2002 Nine Queens – itself a charming if derivative riff on Mamet duplicity – by first-time writer/director Gregory Jacobs, the film is a talkative, economical…

I don’t know what Perfect Blue’s title has to do with the movie itself, but as an adult anime feature about the complexities of celebrity (and celebrity worship), Satoshi Kon’s 1997 debut is quite enthralling. A sugar-coated “pop idol” named Mima decides to abandon her music career for a shot at acting stardom, but her…