Anyone trying to run a civilized country should know that throwing musicians in jail for making music is always a bad idea. That didn’t stop Vladimir Putin’s government from arresting three members of the punk collective Pussy Riot, after the group stormed the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the…
Eager young people can’t find jobs; qualified older people can’t find jobs. There’s nothing funny about that, which is exactly why someone ought to be making comedies about it. The Internship, in which downtrodden old-school salespeople Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson enter the 21st century and land internships at Google,…
You knew it’d happen eventually. And you knew it’d probably happen on Lifetime. Anna Nicole Smith, the model, actress, Playmate, reality TV star and all-around troubled lady who died of a drug overdose in Hollywood, Florida, is finally getting the biopic treatment by Lifetime. And from the looks of the…
When we left the Starz original series Magic City at the end of its first season, Judi Silver and Ike wound up in the clink, with Ben eventually springing Judi. Mercedes and Danny finally got around to hooking up with an uncertain future in front of them. And Ben tried…
It’s guaranteed to top many critics’ lists and deserves an Oscar nomination for best screenplay. Frances Ha is the darling breakout indie film of 2013 that only the bitterest critic could loathe. Friday night, at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, the face and soul of that film, Greta Gerwig, will…
“Least you got to see a motherfucker crucify himself,” Richard Pryor spits in the most surprising footage director Marina Zenovich has unearthed for her new documentary Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic. The scene is of Pryor’s last great cock-up just before his last, great comeback. Pacing restlessly before a Hollywood…
Joss Whedon: From Comic Books to Shakespeare
Young people are lovely in ways they can’t comprehend until years later. Yesterday’s haircut straight out of Scooby-Doo becomes tomorrow’s despondent comb-over. With the onset of varicose veins, the pale, dimpled legs you once hated now seem in memory not so far off from the lily stems of Botticelli’s Venus…
5/31: Now You See Me: Action filmmaker Louis Leterrier’s output is all over the map, from the fitfully delightful Transporter 2 to that irredeemable Clash of the Titans remake. His latest sounds pretty dopey — the FBi tries to stop a group of bank-robbing magicians — but Leterrier, the director…
Some things are charming about European films that ape Hollywood, the same way that seeing yourself reflected through a funhouse mirror can be. The sentiments aren’t quite as saccharine. The obnoxious characters are a touch nastier. Some subplots aren’t tidily resolved. Yet despite those deviations, the gist is essentially the…
Post Tenebras Lux Is Confusing but Pretty
A film seemingly produced only because it boasts enough sizable roles to entice multiple stars, Craig Zisk’s The English Teacher reveals that a respectable cast and much noisy boisterousness isn’t enough to generate a single laugh. Introduced by a stuffy female British narrator as a spinster with no marriage prospects,…
Miami audiences saw Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke at the Borscht Film Festival in 2011. Sundance Film Festival viewers checked it out in 2012. And now, Lucas Leyva and Jillian Mayer have unleashed it on the rest of the world, as part of a series of online film…
Memorial Day Weekend is over, which means it’s time to start thinking of how you will recuperate from your three-day overconsumption of alcohol and MSGs. It’s no secret that one of the preferred ways to recover from a well-celebrated MDW is to vegetate on the couch and watch a hit…
Ladies and gentlemen–anyone, really, who cares about his or her mug–step right up. According to a bit of advice proffered in one of the festival editions of The Hollywood Reporter a few days back, the beauty product to buy while in Cannes is Avibon, an “only-in-France aging cream.” If sun…
Before this week, the films of New York writer/director Noah Baumbach threatened to pigeonhole him as a grim observer of embittered human behavior. Then the 43-year-old invited 29-year-old actress Greta Gerwig to co-write a script with him. Frances Ha, the result that opens in Miami today, pitches a shimmering curveball…
New York is a cruel and beautiful place, just as 27 is a cruel and beautiful age. In Frances Ha, Greta Gerwig plays a woman who’s feeling the weight of both. Frances is an aspiring dancer who has reached the age when “aspiring” really means not cutting it. Life with…
Fast & Furious 6 Is Sublime Dumb Play
The Hangover Part III Punches Down
Pietà Is an Intriguing, Phsychosexually Twisted Tale
In Renoir, a languorous look at the last days of the storied painter, we get a view of the artist at odds with a blue-haired lady’s notion of her favorite impressionist. It’s a pivotal moment of Renoir family history, with father and son both taking creative and sexual inspiration from…
In Arnaud Desplechin’s English-language Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian), Benicio Del Toro—freed at last from the tyranny of playing bit-part heavies in American thrillers and action movies—is James Picard, a Blackfoot Indian who has lost his way in post-World War II America. He’s a veteran, but he’s treated…
