Surely, at some point, they thought of casting Michael Cera. Richard Ayoade’s often marvelous The Double, an existential jest set in a bureaucratic dystopia so familiar and lightly comic that it may as well be Kafka Fantasy Camp, stars Jessie Eisenberg, the Oscar winner and future Lex Luthor, as a…
Philip Seymour Hoffman is an island of rumpled calm in Anton Corbijn’s urgent A Most Wanted Man, a glum-out-of-principle espionage story based on a John Le Carré novel. The role demands that Hoffman be quiet, steady, and occasionally frustrated and that he hold secrets — often from us, which is…
The business of childhood is the business of waiting: waiting for Christmas, waiting for school to let out, waiting to be old enough to stay up past nine. No other movie I can think of captures the wistfulness of those days full of waiting than Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, an ambitious…
Gabe Klinger’s Double Play is a tidy documentary about two creative brains: directors James Benning and Richard Linklater. Benning, the elder of the two, shoots austerely beautiful experimental films that force the audience to, say, stare at seagulls swooshing across a mirrored pond. (The irony of people needing to huddle…
When the traveling indie documentary filmmaker Vincent Moon comes to Miami for a retrospective of his work and a two-day workshop, he hopes to find something to add to his nearly 700-strong catalog of films. “I don’t really know the city at all,” he admits, speaking via phone from Rio…
Practically every day this month, I’ve found myself getting into arguments with someone about how important representation is in media. As many studies have shown, not everyone who goes to the movies or watches television is a generic upper-middle class, straight, white cis male. But when you get down to…
If you weren’t able to try first-hand The Purge Breakout Experience when it rolled into Wynwood last month, the horror gods (no, not Joss Whedon) have taken pity on you. Universal Studios Orlando will be implementing its very own version of a Purge experience during this year’s Halloween Horror Nights…
For a modern stand-up comedian, the biggest commercial achievement is the stand-up concert film — not just an hour-long special, but a feature-length film released in movie theaters. They are rare, because few stand-ups have the right mix of ability and marketability to compete with spaceships and superheroes. But Gabriel…
iOye, mamasita! Yeah, we’re hollering at you, because you’re a hot Latina lady and we think you should be on our television screens. Miami is known for many things, but as Jack Donaghy eloquently puts it, we’re mostly known for our looks and culture: “Why does anyone go to Miami?…
If the Saw series taught us anything, it’s that every quasi-inventive genre movie is fated to become a yearly franchise with increasingly diminishing returns. The Purge practically cried out for this treatment from its premise alone: James DeMonaco’s film had a big idea — a near-future in which “any and…
A defiantly R-rated farce seemingly commissioned to plug the We’re the Millers-shaped hole in the summer lineup, Sex Tape is warmer and more amusing than its ads would lead one to believe. In fact, it’s almost good enough, leaning a little too hard on the innate likability of stars Cameron…
Sirens blare and an eerie voice announces it’s best to remain indoors if you don’t plan to participate. While others make safety arrangements and some sharpen their knives, one man loads his steel-armored black car with plenty of guns and begins cruising. Fires erupt along the street, and gunshots and…
It turns out the cars and planes of Cars and Planes can kiss. Deep into Planes: Fire & Rescue, a time-killing kid flick whose title is an exact summary of its plot, the filmmakers introduce us to two creaky old Winnebagos, a husband and wife in their sunset years, revisiting…
Wish I Was Here, the movie that actor and second-time director Zach Braff partially funded with money raised through Kickstarter, isn’t nearly terrible enough to satisfy all the grumblers who are hoping to see it fail. When Braff couldn’t secure traditional financing for the film, he appealed to the fan…
Marco Bellocchio is one of the great filmmakers of Italian cinema, and, still working at 74, he may be the greatest of those living. But his movies, when they’re released in the States at all, come and go like zephyrs. Even filmgoers who take all kinds of cinema seriously had…
On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, we hear from L.A. Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson, who’s intrigued by the bizarre universe of Pixar’s Planes movies. We also hear about the film critic’s background and how she became interested in the movies by way of subliminal advertising and photography. [Subscribe…
In an age where video on demand (VOD) services reign supreme, and fewer people are willing to make the trip out to catch interesting films that aren’t widely available, everyone’s turning to getting their content online. Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, HBO GO, iTunes, MUBI — those are just some of the…
Sirens blare and an eerie voice announces that it’s best to remain indoors if you don’t plan to participate. While others make safety arrangements, and some sharpen their knives, one man loads his black, steel-armored car with plenty of guns and begins cruising. Fires erupt along the street, and gunshots…
“I forget that people think that I’m the girl with a ponytail and a briefcase,” says Anna Kendrick, perched on a couch in a T-shirt and jeans. Her career-launching role as a prim go-getter in Up in the Air is so far removed from her actual self that she’s still…
Back when SyFy announced it would produce a sequel to Sharknado, the network’s festival of fish guts and failed acting careers, New Times pointed out the obvious: the writers made a serious mistake setting the action in New York City when it was obviously meant to take place in Miami…
When it comes to representation in film, Miami’s not L.A. It’s not New York City. It’s not even Toronto. Compared to these overused movie locales, Miami has just a handful of productions under its belt: Chef, Pain & Gain, Bad Boys, There’s Something About Mary, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. But…
To call Roger Ebert one of the great populist film critics is to damn him with faint praise. Though he took pride in working for the scrappier of the two Chicago dailies, the Sun-Times, and though we do have him to thank — or curse — for popularizing the thumbs-up/thumbs-down…
