Denver cinema

It's heartwarming to see new foreign cinema being shown at every American city, says J Jagannath

I spent a week in Denver, one of the largest cities in the Western USA, and managed to check out a few cinemas in this charming city. 

It exudes the vibe of New York without having to be within sniffing distance of next human. I watched my first Sofia Coppola movie on the big screen at the city’s Landmark Esquire theatre. 

Despite its tonal similarities to the 1970s’ Clint Eastwood-starrer, this atmospheric movie about a wounded Civil War soldier trying to con his way into the hearts of the inhabitants of a Confederate Girls’ boarding school is absorbing. Just the kind of story that Coppola needed to win the best director gong at Cannes, a first for a woman in 56 years.

Colin Farrell as the soldier is functional but the movie derives its strength from the perfect female trifecta of the year: Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning. 

I followed it up with The Big Sick at Mayan cinema, which, much to my surprise, allows alcohol inside. This ridiculously memorable movie about interracial romance between Kumail Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan has to be the biggest American indie sleeper hit of 2017 so far and for all the valid reasons.

Nanjiani as the Pakistani-American stand-up comedian by the day and Uber driver by the night in Chicago is hilarious. The movie’s ingenuity lies in him bonding with his ex-girlfriend’s parents while she is battling a coma. 

Located on the city’s hip South Broadway area, think Brooklyn minus kale madness, the theatre has lots of references to the ancient civilisation around the screen and outside as well.

“The difference between a crime film and a noir film is that the bad guys in crime movies know they’re bad and want to be, while a noir hero thinks he’s a good guy who has been ambushed by life.” 

I was thinking of this Roger Ebert aphorism a lot, while watching Edgar Wright’s conceptually dazzling Baby Driver. 

Ansel Elgort as the eponymous “Baby” steals the show with his antics behind the steering wheel while executing heists and love for 1980s’ dance music that drowns out his childhood tinnitus. His mimetic brilliance while doing mundane things left me hypnotised. The first 20 minutes are the most spellbinding first 20 minutes I have seen in the longest time. 

Ansel Elgort in Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver

After Scott Pilgrim, this is the best thing Edgar Wright came up with — almost like Ocean’s 11 meets Drive at downtown Atlanta.

The movie does lose its steam after a botched heist but it’s still weirdly sophisticated,  courtesy a dandy Jamie Foxx as the crew member and Kevin Spacey as shrewd crew leader. There’s a beautiful Monsters Inc reference mouthed by Spacey, which is pure poetry. 

I happened to watch it at Alamo Drafthouse where everyone, from the support staff to on-screen visuals, keeps telling the audience that talking or texting is verboten in the auditorium and after one warning people will be sent off without returning any money. Even my order for popcorn was taken only after I wrote it on a piece of paper. 

If I am asked to compare American and Indian cinemas, it’s great that alcohol is allowed at the former but the latter has more popcorn options. The former has no intermission and shows only movie previews, while the latter beats you down with minimum 30 minutes of boring ads and a really long interval. 

It’s heartwarming to see new foreign cinema being shown at every American city and I was glad to check out Portuguese movie The Ornithologist at Denver’s Sie Film Center, which shows all the darlings of the film festivals across the world. 

João Pedro Rodrigues’ shimmering sermon of a movie is about someone interested in plumage of birds in Portuguese boondocks who undergoes a series of life-changing incidents mirroring the life of Saint Anthony of Padua. Paul Hamy is the heart and soul as the bird watcher and is dizzyingly self-assured. The theological parts of it might be jarring but it has some beautiful imagery and amazing use of natural light. 

I also experienced the pre-Snapchat life of the late 1990s’ NYC youth in photographer Ryan McGinley’s exhibition, “The Kids Were Alright”, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was both moving and unsettling at once.

jagannath.jamma@bsmail.in