Film, TV & Streaming

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is not nearly curiouser and curiouser enough

Miami International Film Festival 2010 goes for the little guy

In this rare Iranian entry to MIFF, Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi takes us through the underground music scene in Tehran, where all Western-style music is prohibited. Based on real people, places, and events, Nobody Knows About the Persian Cats follows Negar Shaghaghi and Ashkan Koshanejad of the indie band Take…

Chamaco is the only Cuban film showing at the Miami International Film Festival this year. Made for a few hundred dollars, it’s part of a new wave of independent movies now produced on the island thanks to cheap digital cameras. It’s also the first to seriously tackle homosexuality and chauvinism…

A few hours after midnight, a man and a woman meet randomly on the cold, wet streets of Bogotá. He’s Jorge (Quique Mendoza), a taxi driver whose brother was mysteriously murdered. She’s Angela (Gloria Montoya), a sexy but emotionally damaged party girl with out-of-control coke and liquor habits. Gradually, as…

Hugh Hefner is old. He’s so old that Hollywood types have started projects based on his legacy. There are the rumors (tweeted by Hefner himself) that Diablo Cody is writing a movie about him. And one of the documentaries at this year’s Miami Film Festival is Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist…

Eric (Steve Evets) was once a spry young man who met the love of his life at a dance competition. He’s now a graying, slouching postman, slowly losing his mind and stuck caring for two teenage sons. He’s so miserable that his fellow postmen stage a little self-help visualization session…

A last-minute addition to the Miami International Film Festival screening schedule, Bruce Weber’s short documentary Liberty City Is Like Paris to Me is among the most locally focused films in this year’s fest. And, for that reason, it could also end up being a lightning rod for debate. Already, we’ve…

Leo can’t deliver the goods to his girlfriend of six months. And there’s a good reason – he’s gay. But this is Catholic Uruguay, and men don’t just go around kissing other men in public. In Leo’s Room (El Cuarto de Leo), the title character, played by puppy-eyed Martín Rodríguez,…

Despite the fact they’ve been a committed couple for three and a half years, Sonia (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Daniel (Romain Duris) don’t even live together. She sleeps alone in a big, polished Paris apartment while Daniel crashes across town in a perpetually in-progress renovation project that she’s nicknamed his “secret…

The seriously black comedy Police, Adjective at Miami Beach Cinematheque this weekend only

Today, when you pick up a fresh copy of this week’s New Times, take note: There’s a little gift nestled inside. It’s the official program for the 2010 Miami International Film Festival. (General admission tickets went on sale at 9 a.m. this morning.) But before you rip it out, run…

Scorsese’s Shutter Island is the good kind of insane

The White Ribbon is Michael Haneke’s best film

Valentine’s Day has too many stars and too many story lines

From Paris With Love: Cowboy diplomacy from John Travolta

Crazy Heart is a rarity: a well-done, adult American movie

Mel Gibson gets revenge in vigilante flick Edge of Darkness

Endgame, about the covert negotiations in the ’80s that helped bring down apartheid, follows Michael Young (Jonny Lee Miller), a public affairs director for a British gold-mining firm. Miller secretly assembles talks between African National Congress representatives led by Thabo Mbeki (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and powerful Afrikaners like philosophy prof Will…

For better or worse, there isn’t a human experience that French director André Téchiné can resist lathering into a tone poem. Tackling a 2004 incident whose sociopolitical ramifications can hardly be ignored — a young Gentile woman set off a media storm by falsely claiming to be the victim of…

Harrison Ford talks about his new movie, Extraordinary Measures

Peter Jackson makes a one-dimensional Lovely Bones