Denver-based Frontier Airlines, having survived against the odds, will celebrate its 30th year in business by offering customers $29 one-way airfares on 100 routes, the company said Tuesday.

“We want to thank our customers for their loyalty as we celebrate our 30th birthday this year, and what better way to do so than by offering amazing fares to so many incredible destinations,” said Tyri Squyres, vice president of marketing, Frontier Airlines, in a news release.

The promotional fares will be available through 9:59 p.m. Mountain time on Thursday, June 27 for travel through Nov. 13 on a page Frontier has set up for the promotion. Blackout dates, including the July Fourth and Labor Day holidays, apply. The best days to travel to obtain the discounted fares are Monday through Thursday and Saturdays.

The cities with discounted airfares out of Denver include Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Mo., Chicago Midway, Milwaukee, Missoula, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, and Santa Ana, Calif.

Frontier Airlines will need to celebrate another 10 birthdays to match the longevity of the original Frontier, which launched in 1946 under the name Monarch Airlines. The original Frontier lasted until 1986 when it succumbed to intense competition from larger carriers United and Continental at Stapleton International Airport.

People Express Airline acquired Frontier and flew it under its original name, but the original Frontier sought bankruptcy protection in September 1986.

In the years that followed, Continental Airlines began cutting back its service in Denver. Rick Brown, a former United Airlines pilot, his wife Janice, Bob Schulman and former Frontier executives M. C. “Hank” Lund and Sam Adams saw an opportunity for a low-cost carrier to come into the market.

The new Frontier began flying again on July 5, 1994, and it has had its ups and downs.

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The airline gained a following with its discounted fares, but struggled after Southwest Airlines entered the Denver market and it filed for bankruptcy in 2006. It restructured a second time in 2008 after First Data, its credit card processor, decided to withhold the proceeds from all credit card sales.

Republic Airways purchased the carrier out of bankruptcy for $109 million and rebuilt it as an ultra-low-cost category. The airline’s holding company was spun off as a public company in 2021.

Frontier operates 134 A320 aircraft, one of the most fuel-efficient fleets in the U.S., and has another 210 Airbus planes on order, a sign that it expects more growth going forward.

It is the third largest airline operating at Denver International Airport behind United Airlines and Southwest and the largest carrier based in Colorado.

Anchoring the independent movie “Fancy Dance” (streaming on Apple TV+), Lily Gladstone plays Jax, a member of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation in Oklahoma. Her voice is low. She’s partial to baggy sleeveless T-shirts and jeans. Her personality is matter-of-fact and she doesn’t smile much, but she has a droll sense of humor. She is forthright and earnest and suffers no fools. And she’s not above larcenies, petty or otherwise, to put money in her pocket.

Jax is also looking after her 13-year-old niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson). The girl’s mom is Jax’s sister, Tawi, and she hasn’t been home for a couple of weeks. Jax is doing her best to shield Roki from the gravity of the situation: Tawi is missing and nobody seems concerned. The unspoken assumption is too awful — but also too hauntingly commonplace — for anyone to bother verbalizing: Tawi may be dead.

There’s a powwow coming up and Roki is sure her mother will be back in time for them to dance together. Jax doesn’t want to dampen that hope, but things get considerably more complicated when someone from child protective services shows up — “No, there ain’t no father, just the three of us here,” she tells the woman — and then Jax’s estranged white father (Shea Whigham) arrives, uninvited, with the woman he married several years back after Jax’s mother died. His abandonment is still raw and front of mind. “I had to move on with my life,” he says. “I tried to take you and your sister with me, but you chose to stay here.” Jax is unimpressed with this excuse: “Why would we leave our home?”

The sentiment behind those words is dismissed when he and his wife unilaterally decide Roki would be better off with them instead. Jax has a criminal record and that’s all the excuse the state needs to rubber-stamp this forced removal. Roki doesn’t even know these people, but she’s bundled off with them — and off the reservation — all the same.

Since no one else has bothered, Jax starts making inquiries about her sister, and just the act of asking becomes a dangerous proposition. With the exception of a woman Jax is casually seeing who works at a local strip club called Tail Feathers, people either tense up or mock Jax when she shows them a flyer with Tawi’s photo on it. I love the way Gladstone plays these moments; she is stubborn and stands her ground, but flickers of wariness and alarm play across her face. She’s willing to take risks because she’s desperate for answers. That doesn’t mean she’s fearless.

Deroy-Olson is equally terrific. In the early going, we see her wearing a candy necklace, which underscores just how young she is despite some of the streetwise shoplifting tactics she’s picked up from Jax. She trusts her aunt implicitly and their bond is given a wonderful poetic description when Roki asks Jax about the Cayuga word for “aunt.” Director and co-writer Erica Tremblay told IndieWire about the origins of that scene: “I was studying Cayuga eight hours a day, and then writing at night. We were learning familial words. So I learned that the word for mother is knó:ha and the word for auntie is knohá:ah, which means ‘little mother.’ I was just so inspired to make Jax a little mother.”

The reality of their situation is grim. There may not be a lot of tenderness around them, but Jax and Roki’s relationship is filled with it, which is how Tremblay (with co-writer Miciana Alise) has made a movie that feels so alive but also human-scaled. Jax isn’t the type to sit back and wait, so she eventually collects Roki in the middle of the night in order to take her to the powwow. Technically this means they’re on the run and her father reports her. When their road trip makes the news, Jax can’t help but note the irony: The FBI is out looking for them, but not her missing sister. There’s a particularly deft scene where they’re stopped in a parking lot by Homeland Security and the officer asks them to prove their U.S. citizenship. I won’t divulge how it plays out but there’s so much going on in this moment and it’s a very effective way to make several points at once about the biases and bigotries and twisted priorities of law enforcement.

The film is also more confirmation that Gladstone is a bonafide movie star. Oscar-nominated for her role in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” she makes nuanced choices and is the kind of actor who holds the screen with a wonderful charisma. “They are both sisters mourning their missing sister,” she told IndieWire when asked about her role in both films. “Same land, a hundred years later. They are very different women in very different points in history, but it’s a continuation of the same old story.”

Gladstone, Deroy-Olson and Temblay have found a way to breathe real life into that story.

“Fancy Dance” — 3 stars  (out of 4)

Where to watch: Apple TV+

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

“Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” marks Kevin Costner’s return to the Western genre that brung ‘im into stardom nearly 40 years ago. This first part constitutes a stern handshake agreement with his audience: Just get through these first three hours, people. Quit your bellyaching. You know what these folks had to do to survive?

Things could perk up and get rolling come August, when Chapter 2 of this reverently labeled “American Saga” continues in theaters, to be followed by Chapter 3 (currently filming) and then, finances and distribution/streaming arrangements with Warner Bros. and Max willing, the big finale. But Chapter 1 feels like throat-clearing — a serviceable horse opera overture to a curiously dispassionate passion project.

“Horizon” dates back to the 1980s, when Costner’s career was launched by “Silverado” (1985), in which he was the liveliest element by far, playing the giddy, loose-cannon brother of Scott Glenn. Rewatching “Silverado” today, in the wake of Costner’s familiar, surly, “Yellowstone” grimacing, it’s astonishing how little remains of that earlier performer, and it’s not just the age difference. Now 69, Costner has settled in a narrow, slot-canyon sort of macho archetype, which has worked well for him, depending on the scripts. Here and there in “Horizon” it works, too, when the calculation falls away and a stray moment of hidden feeling surfaces, quietly.

But actors are at the mercy of their material. Chapter 1 of “Horizon” is wide but shallow, and wanly dramatized in between the passages of violence, some well-staged and effective, others more generically brutal. The movie surely wins the Loudest Splurch sound design award; when an Apache arrow hits a human target, it’s as if the arrows were literally wired for sound.

The first “Horizon” film divides itself into what feels like three one-hour TV episodes. Cowriters Jon Baird and Costner lay many miles of narrative track designed to transport several groups of characters in different parts of the West to the same destination, a tiny riverbank town in the making called Horizon in the San Pedro Valley, aka John Ford country. This is where the film starts, in 1859.

It’s Apache land, and the white colonizers (fine, “settlers”) have put literal stakes in it to claim it for themselves. This leads quickly to a retaliatory Apache massacre, contextualized a bit by a handful of scenes in Chapter 1 devoted to, or at least concerned with, Apache warrior brothers Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe) and Taklishim (Tatanka Means) and their tribal factions. Two survivors of the massacre, brutally widowed Frances (Sienna Miller) and her daughter Lizzie (Georgia MacPhail), are taken in by the kindly Union Army officer played by Sam Worthington at a nearby fort. Love is in the air, but demurely.

Costner directed “Horizon” in addition to co-writing, producing and partially financing the project; he has acknowledged planning to spend $100 million or more of his own money to conjure all four chunks of the saga into existence. As an actor, he rides into Chapter 1 at the one-hour point, as tight-lipped Hayes Ellison, horse trader and former gunslinger. He’s in pre-statehood Montana territory for reasons to be named later, and he’s soon tangling with a random scumbag from a mean, bloodthirsty local clan. Haphazardly, Costner’s character ends up heading out on the trail with wily sex worker Marigold (Abbey Lee) who’s taking care of a baby, while bad men pursue them and Costner’s faraway wife remains, for now, unseen and far away.

Meanwhile, along the Santa Fe Trail, Luke Wilson plays a wagon train leader trying to keep his Horizon-bound settlers alive in the hot Kansas territory, with little water, plenty of crises and, at one point, a couple of pervy Peeping Toms spying on the best-looking female while she sneaks a starlit shower for herself. Wilson’s character, the voice of reason, basically shames the woman for hogging the water and catching the menfolk’s eye. You can see what Costner and Baird are attempting here, adding this tidbit about the scarcity of the water supply. But dialogue like this, and too much of “Horizon,” is just plain flat. I don’t think Costner’s his own best colleague here, either as writer or director. He and his cinematographer J. Michael Muro have an eye for topography, and  backdrops, but “Horizon” needs more than horizons.

So you take what you can get. I got some honest satisfaction from Miller’s valiant attempt to make her saintly cliché human, and from the ease and laconic command Michael Rooker (as a Union Army officer and sounding board for Danny Huston’s fort commander) brings to the material. Chapter 1 ends with a sizzle reel of Chapter 2 highlights, giving audiences a sense of where all the characters are headed, and introducing new, big-city ones. The only thing missing is a voiceover: “Next time on ‘Horizon’ …”

I can’t help but wonder if Costner didn’t take his cues from the wrong kind of Westerns. Watch Anthony Mann’s “The Naked Spur” (1953) sometime, which gave James Stewart one of his most bracing challenges; the movie’s scenic but purposeful, lean, compact, character-driven, full of shifting allegiances and centered, however uneasily, by a fascinatingly self-doubting protagonist. Costner has it in him to work that same territory. “Horizon,” so far, anyway, is more about a certain set of movie memories than a movie of its own.

“Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” — 2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for violence, some nudity and sexuality)

Running time: 3:01

How to watch: Premieres in theaters June 27

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

 

 

 

It is that time of year and the mind turns to grills.

For many, the thing to grill is ribs, but most anything will do.

I am not a cook or a grill guy but consider myself something of a rib expert, having eaten plenty (those at Twin Anchors are on top of my current list) and for a few 1980s years served as a judge for the Mike Royko Ribfest, generally acknowledged, by no less an authority than “The Chicago Food Encyclopedia” (University of Illinois Press), to have been “one of the nation’s first large barbeque competitions.” I remember those days fondly, as I wrote a while ago, “the unity, the harmony and the togetherness of them all. There were, side by side, groups from Glencoe and West Pullman, Rosemont and Roseland, Austin and Streeterville — white, Black and brown. There was no anger or violence, no arrests or trouble. If there were arguments, they were about cooking methods or sauces ‘sweet or tangy.’ These were harmonious and hopeful gatherings.”

So, I was talking about grilling with Joe Carlucci, a man I have often consulted in matters of food and drink. His name may be familiar to you because he has had an acclaimed and influential presence on the local scene. He said to me, “You can’t cook, you know?

Carlucci was born and raised in New York. After graduating with a degree in psychology from Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University, he worked in the music business for a few years, saying, “My first day on the job I had to pick up Bette Midler at the airport.”

He came to Chicago in the early ‘80s, began operating eponymous restaurants in the city and suburbs and worked with a couple of Mike Ditka’s joints. He still operates a few places and consults with others, including recently with some of the most popular grill guys in the world. They are the BBQ Pit Boys and this is how he found them about four years ago: “I was watching TV one Saturday morning and on came this guy with a beard being interviewed about grilling,” Carlucci says. “With my background in music I think I have a good ability to judge star quality and the guy I was watching had it.”

He tracked down the man, whose “grill name” is “Bobby Fame” but his real name is actually Bob Ahlgren, the creator of the culinary phenomenon known as BBQ Pit Boys. They talked. They liked one another. They became partners and Carlucci helped facilitate the recent publication of “BBQ Pit Boys Book of Real Guuud Barbecue” (Firefly Books). It is a handsome 256-page, colorful, lively and entertaining book. It is packed with recipes and tips for grilling and smoking a variety of meats, as well as sides and desserts. All the usual suspects are here, such as pulled pork, ribs and chicken wings. There are also recipes for alligator, lamb and venison. There’s fish, soups and sides. There’s a lot.

The cover of “BBQ Pit Boys Book of Real Guuud Barbecue.” (Firefly Books)

It also gives you the BBQ Pit Boys origin story, which Ahlgren told me over the phone a few days ago. “Well, I ran a small publishing company and was a serious antique dealer,” he says. “When YouTube first started around 2007, I thought it might be a good thing to spread the word about my business. Then a friend of mine from California wanted to get a recipe for something I grilled for him when he was visiting. I thought it would be fun to do that as a video and I posted it for him on YouTube.”

YouTube called him, asked him to become a partner and shipped him thousands of dollars worth of cameras and other equipment. They also sent him a check for $32.

That was long ago and the checks have gotten larger. The BBQ Pit Boys is now an international fraternal order, with some 18,000 international chapters and 230,000 pitmasters, according to the book. Episodes are posted every week and they have been viewed more than 94 million times.

The nature of the show hasn’t really changed. It’s still a group of guys around a grill, drinking and making food. Ahlgren is the host, affable and amiable and, as he says, “making sure we don’t take ourselves too seriously.”

The enterprise is based not in Tennessee or Arkansas, as the boys’ outfits might suggest, but rather in Connecticut. In addition to YouTube, the Pit Boys are now spread across the other prominent social media platforms such as Facebook, X and Instgram. They have 2.2 million YouTube subscribers, are in the top 5% of all YouTube channels and are number one when it comes to BBQ.

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Not surprisingly, Ahlgren has been approached “more than ten times by network producers about doing shows for them,” he says. “But I have rejected them all. They talk about how they can make me famous but I am already famous and I don’t want to be part of fake TV, become part of the reality show world.  And I never want to lose control of the content and the way we deliver it.”

This was never intended to be a star-making vehicle. The focus is on the food and that’s one reason why Ahlgren and his pals wear sunglasses and cowboy hats that cover most of their faces. That aversion to the seductions of the mainstream entertainment business appeals to Carlucci, and to another food person who is also a partner with the Pit Boys. Ed Rensi is a former president and CEO of McDonald’s and he and Carlucci are intent on exploring all manner of opportunities.

“Bob and his pit boys have such a broad platform and the ability to reach so many people,” says Carlucci. “But we are going to be true to the spirit of the show and of the people. They never had a business plan. This is just a great fun idea that has blossomed into a wonderful enterprise.”

He tells me that a Pit Boys line of sauces and rubs is currently available in 3,000 stores across Canada, and a Pit Boys beer can be had in Texas. The website offers all manner of official merchandise.

Then he asked me which of the book’s recipes I was thinking of tackling.

“You can’t cook, you know?” he said.

“Yes,” I told him. “That’s why I’m going to try the Cigar Ash BBQ Sauce (page 233) or Bacon Oreo BBQ Cookies (page 255).”

He shook his head and rolled his eyes.