What makes a timeless classic? It’s got to be honest, it’s got to be made with passion, and it has to bring something to the table that’s never been done. It’s a daunting task, and sometimes, it’s better done when you’re not really trying. Nas was able to do it…
Everything about Gone Girl, David Fincher’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s enormously popular 2012 thriller about a deteriorating marriage and a wife gone missing, is precise and thoughtful — it’s as well planned as the perfect murder, with its share of vicious, shivery delights. But at the end of the perfect…
There are few things more terrifying than a scary story that’s based on some truth. Sure, when it comes to movie adaptations, Hollywood will exaggerate the gory details here and there, but the underlying foundation is real. Such was the case with last year’s The Conjuring, based on the lives…
One rhyme in particular crystallizes the genius of Nas’s 1994 classic Illmatic. It comes in the song “One Love,” which takes the form of a letter to a friend in prison: “Congratulations, you know you got a son,” Nas raps. “I heard he looks like ya, why don’t your lady…
Every child who’s thrown a tantrum, packed a bag and plotted to run away has shivered with the same vengeful thought: I wish I could see how sad they’ll be when I’m gone. The Left Behind franchise implies that evangelicals haven’t grown up. This new film version, the latest in…
There’s a good chance that filmmaker Signe Baumane isn’t on your radar yet, but with her first feature film, Rocks in My Pockets, being declared Latvia’s submission for the Academy Awards this year, she should be. It’s not just because of her Oscar submission that folks should be looking out…
Public sex on theme park rides, fiercely independent Latinas, brawls between really high teens, and a dash of incest: These are the childlike joys of Happyland, the new MTV dramedy chronicling the day-drunk, partner-swapping, clear-skinned, young employees of a Disney-ish park. The show, which debuts today at 11 p.m., is…
Many leave their hometowns for Hollywood, wide-eyed and hopeful, ready to make movies and to become stars. But for the rest of us, the ones who prefer to stick around their haunts or simply enjoy the scenery and atmosphere that Miami provides, there’s some pretty cool filmmaking and screening options…
Another week, another hustle, but it doesn’t have to be a struggle. Resist the urge to strangle that coworker and treat yo’self. We’re making it even easier for you by listing all these cool, free events. Take advantage of some free art tours or even take a date to one…
Have you ever been so affected by a story it stayed with you for years? The Internet feels that way about one feature; a viral sensation so big, there’s a Kickstarter out there to turn it into a movie. We here at Miami New Times can’t help but be pleased…
As Bob McCall in The Equalizer, Denzel Washington plays a regular Joe who turns into an eye-gouging, brain-drilling nightmare for Boston’s Russian mob. At first Washington “toodles about a Home Depot-like store, helping customers, decked out in New Balance shoes and jeans so last-century you’ll be looking for pleats,” writes…
If you thought Miami movie-going couldn’t get better than a plastic cup of wine at Paragon Grove theater, think again. Soon, Brickell will have its very own luxury dine-in cinema, courtesy of Mexico City-based Cinemex. Developer Swire Properties Inc. announced this week that Cinemex will open its first cinema in…
Plenty of filmmakers have wildly imaginative careers, but none have been quite as playful and engaging as former Monty Python troupe member Terry Gilliam. And O Cinema Wynwood, known for picking intriguing films and presenting unexpected but deserving classics, is exactly the theater primed to explore such a filmmaker’s varied…
The Boxtrolls is a kiddie charmer that makes you laugh, cower, and think of Hitler. That’s an unusual trifecta, but then again, this is an unusual film. If the German Expressionists were skilled at stop-motion animation, they’d have already made it. This is cartoon Caligari, a fable set on a…
“There’s no avoiding trouble in this world if you want to make something,” Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch says about making his first feature film. “But it’s worth it.” And God Help the Girl, the musical he wrote and directed, certainly took a lot of toil to become the…
Surprisingly moving for a film assembled from such familiar scenes, Craig Johnson’s The Skeleton Twins mushes together queasy/quirky indie family drama with the beats of a romantic comedy. You know the outline just from eyeballing the poster: Kristen Wiig’s Maggie and Bill Hader’s Milo find their way toward loving each…
Before its regular-Joe hero gets bitten by a radioactive equation and becomes the Equalizer, who’s sort of the Rain Man of puncturing Russian mobsters’ windpipes with corkscrews, Antoine Fuqua’s eye-gouging, brain-drilling, crowd-pleasing latest gives you a reel or two to remember what movies felt like back when they were about…
Tim Sutton’s Memphis plays like a vaunted director’s greatest folly. That’s a compliment. Here’s a film of the moments — lyric and rough-hewn, bawdy and elliptical — a great storyteller hopes might enrich a memorable story. (Or, in the case of a Heaven’s Gate, bloat a weak one to bursting.)…
Terry Gilliam is a gifted, ambitious filmmaker who, sadly, may now be more famous for being misunderstood and underfunded than he is for actually making movies. The Zero Theorem isn’t likely to reverse that equation. In this half-squirrely, half-torpid sci-fi adventure, Christoph Waltz, with a shaved head and a face…
Most people know Rich Wilkerson Jr., a junior preacher at Miami Garden’s Trinity Church, from the endless Internet coverage of the Kanye West and Kim Kardashian wedding. Amid the shower of news surrounding the nuptials, Buzzfeed and other sites kept swooning over the surprisingly hot man of God who married…
Jorge “Jokes” Yanes is one of the most respected filmmakers in Miami. Almost ten years before Youtube, when the TV news was still editing on Beta tapes, Yanes built his own computerized editing system in his family’s home from Chinese parts bought in Doral. He’s done every job on every…
“There’s no avoiding trouble in this world if you want to make something,” Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch says about making his first feature film. “But it’s worth it.” And God Help the Girl, the delightful musical he wrote and directed, certainly took a lot of work to become…
