This weekend at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, there was a double feature of films starring silver screen legend, Geraldine Chaplin. On Saturday, David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago screened for its 50th anniversary, and on Sunday, it was Robert Altman’s turn. His beloved Nashville played to a nearly-full house, 40 years…
Miami has been the fictional home of some of television’s most iconic television shows: The Golden Girls, Crockett and Tubbs, and Dexter all lived in the Magic City. But if those are the only shows you can think of, then you’re missing an entire genre of amazing television filmed in…
The Miss Universe Pageant returned to Miami last night, and it was everything you expected it to be. Which is to say: leggy women wearing way too much makeup while strutting and smiling and showing off their bikini bodies in the name of national pride. The pageant may be a…
This Tuesday, the Miami Jewish Film Festival will feature a series of experimental, avant-garde films by two of contemporary movie-making’s greats. Bill Morrison and his regular collaborator composer, Michael Gordon, will appear for an evening of seven short films, conversation, and live music at the Miami Beach Cinematheque. Morrision and…
When Miami-based filmmaker Kenny Riches got the call from the Sundance Film Festival, he could barely hide his excitement from close friend Robert “Meatball” Lorie. Riches’ film, The Strongest Man, had been accepted and Lorie was the film’s lead. They were both working on building the VIP section at Design…
Mortdecai is creeping into theaters with the flushed shame of a debutante who expects to be pelted with tomatoes. It’s a pity. In 1965, Mortdecai would be the hit of the year. Director David Koepp whips through this pop-colored caper about crooked art dealer Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) — one…
We’ve already written about our excitement over the films at the Miami Jewish Film Festival and interviewed festival director Igor Shteyrenberg, but we haven’t had a chance to talk about what we’re looking forward to, as well as what we’ve checked out and loved. With MJFF already underway, it’s about…
The most pleasurably ludicrous highlight of The Boy Next Door comes a half-hour in, before the sex and murders and something-is-in-the-mirror-behind-her! jolts that stud the film like Flavor Crystals. The high-school English teacher played by Jennifer Lopez is dazzled by a gift from the handsome student (Ryan Guzman) who has…
There’s something bracingly honest about The Humbling, Barry Levinson’s movie about a 67-year-old Shakespearean actor, played by Al Pacino, who, after being struck with crippling anxiety, gets his mojo restored — some of it, anyway — by a manipulative muse (Greta Gerwig). Based on the 2009 Philip Roth novel of…
Each year, screenwriters kill off enough offscreen children to fill a Chuck E. Cheese’s. A dead son or daughter gives a movie the illusion of depth plus an easy explanation for whatever the script ladles on the surviving parents. Binge-drinking? Nymphomania? Sudden bouts of break dancing? Blame the wee coffin…
Every great scientist was once a kid, and every kid, as it turns out, is really a great scientist. “When you’re young, you know how to explore, innovate and investigate,” says FAU doctoral student and geologist Troy Berner. “As children, we’re born with these instincts, and it’s society that abandons…
The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore’s great misfortune isn’t that it replaces The Colbert Report, but that it premieres after Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. The Colbert Report was sui generis, and will likely remain so, because such a series makes leviathan demands on its host: crackerjack comedic skills,…
“The only way to escape the streets is to fight your way out.” That’s the life philosophy that pervades Miami filmmaker Billy Corben’s documentary Dawg Fight. The latest film from Corben’s studio, Rakontur, chronicles the underground backyard-fighting scene in Perrine, a suburb that’s just a few miles south of Miami…
How quickly things have changed in Cuba. After President Obama’s declaration of “normalized” relations between the U.S. and Cuba, Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider’s documentary Havana Curveball already captures what is, perhaps, a different Cuba. The new policy would have certainly made the mission of 13-year-old Mica Jarmel-Schneider a little…
Imagine living the first portion of your life as someone who identifies as something completely different than who you are, simply because your family insists they were that type of person. In a way, this is Lacey Schwartz’s story and her documentary Little White Lie shows just that. Schwartz, who…
Can’t keep track of when all your favorite shows return this year? You’ve come to the right place. Chances are now that the holiday season is over, and every station is done playing Home Alone 2 on a loop, your must watch show is nearing a return. Whether it be…
The bi-coastal film pod continues in 2015! In New York, Village Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl, along with Voice film critic Stephanie Zacharek, connect via the magic of the Internet with LA Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson to discuss the nominations for this year’s Academy Awards, announced on January 15…
It’s been over a year since Jeanette Garcia and Daryl Rodriguez created the Kickstarter for their documentary, World 1-1, and recently the filmmakers presented their film to a delighted audience at the Cosford Cinema here at Miami. It’s been months since their premiere in San Francisco at the Roxie Theater,…
Here’s the pipsqueak who has hauled himself up into a sharp-dressed leading man. Here’s the comic who’s boundlessly inventive in his swearing but also suave and commanding in pursuit of love, the motormouth horndog who yawps about like a puppy on fire but can melt your mother’s heart with his…
In Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) — an astoundingly talented marksman credited with more than 160 confirmed kills in Iraq — runs into a fellow veteran at a mechanic’s shop between deployments. The soldier shows Kyle an artificial leg and thanks him for saving his…
In the opening moments of Two Days, One Night, a working-class Belgian woman named Sandra (Marion Cotillard) wakes from a midday nap, takes a phone call, removes a tart from the oven, pops a pill, and begs herself not to cry. With a sense of having arrived in the middle…
Forget its generic title, its breakup setup, and its indie-standard Brooklyn walk-and-talks: Writer/director Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior is the freshest comedy of life and love in the city since Obvious Child. Hilarious and heartbroken, Akhavan stars as Shirin, a bisexual Iranian-American video artist just bounced from her lover’s Gowanus apartment…
