Kick Ass: A superhero flick for the YouTube age

Kick-Ass sets itself up as an unadulterated exposé of the teenaged mind. Tired of being mugged by high school thugs in a Manhattan that’s notably scummier than the real thing, our hero Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson, a hot young thing given a perm-and-glasses nerdover) wonders, in a hilariously put-on and…

Director Kareem Mortimer Talks Religion, the Carribean, and Gay Love

After producing several documentary films (and a few shorts) over the last six years, Bahamian filmmaker Kareem Mortimer has finally made the leap to feature-length fiction work with Children of God. And he has no intention of looking back. “Documentaries were really, really important to me. I will probably return…

Miami International Film Festival: A Review of Florence Jaugey’s La Yuma

On the surface, this debut feature by writer-director Florence Jaugey is about a girl boxer, Yuma (Alma Blanco), struggling to escape the barrios of Managua. She lives in a concrete-floor shack with her often-absent mother, unemployed pedophilic stepdad, teen junkie brother, and two younger siblings. She loves and protects the…

Miami Film Festival’s Closing Night Film Wins Oscar

Last night, the closing night film of the Miami International Film Festival The Secret in Their Eyes won the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the Academy Awards. According to the festival’s artistic director Tiziana Finzi, director Juan José Campanella will not only attend this year’s closing night, he’s bringing that…

MIFF: Interview With Vidal Cantu, Director of A Step From Heaven

In 1994, Juan Angel Ruiz was involved in a devastating car wreck. In the first terrifying moments after regaining consciousness in his hospital bed, Juan Angel tried to look around the room. “I opened my eyes. The light over my bed blinded me. It was too bright,” he says in…