Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore — the married couple behind Denver indie pop act Tennis — didn’t expect much to come of the humble band the two formed after a seven-month sailing trip; they expected nothing, to be precise. “When we were starting out, we didn’t have any plans or ambition to turn this into […]
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Willis — The Understanding
From the opening R&B samples and powerful horn section that triumphantly blasts the arrival of a new hero on the scene, Willis’ The Understanding perfectly captures the inner-city swagger of a blaxploitation movie icon. Strutting through these dirty streets like he is God almighty, Willis unashamedly kicks the doors in and sits at the head of […]
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Bottoms up
Photo: Mark Jaworski Things are definitely looking more up than down and out for The Front Bottoms. The indie punk act spent more than a few tours playing hole-in-the-walls and sleeping on floors but it now finds itself selling out sizable clubs and getting pegged to open up for well-known bands like Brand New, which […]
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Killer tunes
Photo: Ben Aqua Sam Chown, best known as one-half of the Texas experimental psych duo Zorch, constantly has music rattling around in his brain. It forced him to form his latest outfit, Shmu, a shoegazing R&B trio, to get all the sounds he has been collecting out into the open for public consumption. “This is […]
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We Are What We Are
From Stake Land director Jim Mickle, this American do-over finds its fever in a religious fervor, with scripture-quoting sourpuss Frank Parker (Bill Sage, Precious) mourning the accidental death of his wife. That tragedy leaves their eldest daughter, Iris (Ambyr Childers, The Master), in the unenviable position of assuming the family duty of … let’s just […]
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Badges of Fury
OK, so that’s not really a joke. It is the setup for Badges of Fury, an Asian film that is a joke. Investigating this string of so-called “Smile Murders” are two police detectives: the grizzled old pro (Jet Li, The Expendables 2) and the young renegade (Zhang Wen, The Guillotines). Having Li in a film used to be a surefire […]
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A Single Shot
Shot‘s sights are set on John (Sam Rockwell), a dirt-poor hunter who mistakes a young woman for a deer — not necessarily a negative except that a trigger was involved and John’s aim is true. When he tends to her dead body, he finds a lot of cash next to her and assumes it won’t be missed. […]
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The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box
The Midas Box of the title is an ancient object that turns anything it houses into gold. Hidden for centuries, it can be found only via the one map in existence that reveals its location. Naturally, a very bad man named Otto Luger (Sam Neill, Jurassic Park) has found the map, so it’s only a […]
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Cat People
Director Paul Schrader (The Canyons) bravely forged a new path in updating the 1942 RKO classic — evident from frame one with a gorgeous prologue, unfolding slowly with a dreamlike quality. Purposely abstract and erotic, it’s the kind of sequence the legendary Val Lewton never would have considered four decades earlier, even if the squeaky-clean […]
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August: Osage County
“Don’t get all Carson McCullers on us,” Julia Roberts’ character warns a relative, referring to the 20th-century author who specialized in stories of Southern tragicomedy. The film takes its own advice — its first and greatest misstep. With Tulsa-born Tracy Letts adapting his 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning play for the screen, August: Osage County should wear […]