American Black Film Festival Kicks Off Four Days of Awesomeness

The American Black Film Festival (ABFF) comes back to Miami to celebrate the contributions that the African-American community has made to the film industry. And this year the ABFF has yet again compiled a dizzying schedule comprised of four days of film screenings, cocktail receptions, workshops, and “master classes” taught…

Film Review: Hobo with a Shotgun Has Heart, Boobs, and Blood

​A nameless homeless man arrives at his new home by train. He enters what the chief of police calls “Fucktown” to which he welcomes the tramp before holding him down so that a couple of douchebags might carve the word “scum” into his chest.The film Hobo with a Shotgun was…

Graphic Artist Mike Mills Starts Something New with Beginners

Playing an emotionally asphyxiated illustrator whose cancer-stricken dad comes out of the closet at age 75, Ewan McGregor looks positively yummy in this gay-is-OK dramedy from the distributor that brought us The Kids Are All Right. In fact, Beginners, a semi-autobiographical movie by SoCal skater-boy-turned-graphic-designer-and-filmmaker Mike Mills, has no shortage…

Beginners: a gay-is-OK dramedy

Playing an emotionally asphyxiated illustrator whose cancer-stricken dad comes out of the closet at age 75, Ewan McGregor looks positively yummy in Beginners, a gay-is-OK dramedy from the distributor that brought us The Kids Are All Right. In fact, this semi-autobiographical movie by SoCal skater-boy-turned-graphic-designer-and-filmmaker Mike Mills has no shortage…

Larry Crowne: Tom Hanks ages into midlife obsolescence

For a movie called Larry Crowne, it sure is tough to get a solid read on the character of Larry Crowne. Directed, co-written by, and starring Tom Hanks in the title role, the film seems to want to be some kind of postrecessional pick-me-up, an “It Gets Better” video for…

Hobo With a Shotgun: nauseatingly violent sleaze

Pick a reason to balk at this spot-on, garishly threadbare paean to ’80s no-budget sleaze: It apes a genre that was already creaky when its director/co-writer, Jason Eisener, was still in nappies; it’s nauseatingly violent; it began life (and arguably should’ve finished it) as a mock trailer for faux-grindhouse gazillionaires…

Hipster Batman and Other Picks for the Geek Film Festival

Florida Supercon is this weekend, and this year, there’s a new addition:  the Geek Film Festival. It’s off to a big start with over 50 movies screening. There are documentaries, sci-fi, and horror flicks as well as parodies and shorts. There are profiles of cartoonists and even a few cartoons…

Cary Elwes on Princess Bride, His Sex Symbol Status, and Comic Cons

​Cary Elwes. Hubba hubba. No one’s saying the man isn’t a great actor, but he’s also obviously a dreamboat. The British screen star stole a generation of ladies’ hearts as Westley, the farm boy in The Princess Bride, and then he made us laugh in Mel Brooks’ spoof Robin Hood: Men…

Horror Movies That Will Make You Turn Amish

FlickrTechnology is frightening. Just ask the Amish. After all, computers contract and die of viruses on a regular basis. Office printers have been known to burst into flames. Televisions stifle demons with white lines and black fuzz. Then there are cell phones, with their inability to detect a signal at…

Blank City Catalogs Cultural Gatekeepers of NYC’s No Wave Scene

Blank City, which opens this weekend at Miami Beach Cinematheque, is a self-defeating user-friendly primer on a group of films whose aura was enhanced by the fact that one had to brave scenester gatekeepers to find them. A loose history of underground movies from the hybridized gallery-art/loft-rock/filmmaking scene that coalesced…