Like shooting a Fassbinder film, running a film festival can be a frenzied, grotesque circus. It comes as no surprise that only one person stepped up when Franc Castro, former Executive Director of the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, stepped down last year. “I was the only one who…
When Humphrey Bogart’s son, Stephen Bogart, decided to start a film festival dedicated to his father, the Naples, Florida-based writer knew the perfect city: Key Largo. It happens to be the title of the film set in the well-known Upper Key. Directed by John Huston, Key Largo stars Bogart and…
The Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival marks its 16th anniversary with ten days of great works, both silly and groundbreaking, offering more than 60 films representative of 20 countries. The festival has come a long way from its humble beginning as a three-day weekend affair. It has compiled a…
Although it’s based on the true story of the illegitimate daughter of a Royal Navy captain and an enslaved African woman, Amma Asante’s Belle’s richest inspiration comes from a painting. A 1779 double portrait hanging at Scone Palace in Scotland, it shows a pretty blonde teenager decked out in typical…
The vampires that walk among us — and they do — are not the Twilight kind or the True Blood kind or even the Buffy kind. In the world of Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, the director’s most emotionally direct film since Dead Man and maybe his finest, period,…
Still mad you didn’t meet James Franco last year when he promoted the Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival’s screening of his film Interior. Leather Bar.? Don’t fret. Franco’s impish grin and squinty gaze may be gone, but he’s not the only creative genius making LGBT films. MGLFF features 65…
The temperature hangs in the mid-70s in Miami, and New York City-based actor/writer/director John Turturro remarks, “It’s just so nice to be outside. I’m so happy to be outside.” Though it’s breezy, his neat crop of salt-and-pepper hair remains unshakable. He sits in the shade of a large gazebo at…
One of the great pleasures of regular moviegoing isn’t seeing great films. It’s finding the little oddballs, the modest entertainments that miss just as often as they hit but leave you with the feeling that someone poured heart, soul, and a sense of humor into the work at hand. Fading…
Tom Hiddleston can pull off extreme looks. In The Avengers, he strutted around in Loki’s two-foot horned helmet. For Midnight in Paris, he finessed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s prim finger waves. And in his latest, Jim Jarmusch’s vampire romance Only Lovers Left Alive, Hiddleston lounges bare-chested in velvet-cuffed robes. The only…
Outrageously enough, the moral of Moms’ Night Out seems to be that moms should never get a night out. This Mother’s Day weekend release is pretty much a PG-rated The Hangover, but with an ill-fitting God angle that slowly wedges its way into the movie — an agenda that, in…
Not very long ago in a city very close to our hearts, a Guatemalan-born actor was cast in the upcoming seventh episode of Star Wars. We don’t yet know what role is in store for Oscar Isaac, previously known for supporting characters in Drive and the 2010 remake of Robin…
Last year was a landmark year for LGBT rights. Aside from many states legalizing same-sex marriage, the United States Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as a union between a man and woman, for the purposes of federal matters, such…
Criticism doesn’t get nearly enough credit these days. Most people just bash critics in disagreement. With Roger Ebert’s At the Movies and the like all missing, it’s up to most critics to make their own spotlight, but here in Miami, they’ve got a great helping hand. Over at the Miami…
Still mad you didn’t meet James Franco last year when he promoted the Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival’s screening of his film Interior. Leather Bar.? Don’t fret. Franco’s impish grin and squinty gaze may be gone, but he’s not the only creative genius making LGBT films. The world-renowned festival…
Films like BFFs disprove the myth that a majority of film festival offerings are nothing more than pretentious, self-indulgent arts projects. BFFs is a funny, cute film with well-developed characters who endear themselves to the audience. “The film is firmly in the ‘dramedy’ realm,” says the film’s director Andrew Putschoegl…
Art, food, and mingling are a few of Miami’s favorite things. It’s no wonder there’s a constant flow of gallery events ready to feed hungry mouths and egos, one artist showing at a time. But something’s missing, and that something is consideration of what artwork can do outside of white…
Wednesday just might not be the best night to go watch a movie. Last night, moviegoers at the Regal South Beach Stadium 18 were interrupted with the blaring of the fire alarm. At around 7:30 p.m., the alarm sounded, causing guests to think it was just some sort of routine…
Who ever said, “Nice guys finish last” is an asshole. Just ask couture designer and season one winner of Lifetime’s Under the Gunn, Ozcar Garcia Lopez. The Coral Gables native, who admittedly says that he can’t stand dramatic confrontations, gained praises from mega-star judges, Heidi Klum, and Neil Patrick Harris,…
Watching Kristen Wiig on Saturday Night Live, you maybe sometimes wondered if she was from outer space, perhaps some planet where women have big foreheads and tiny hands and sing like chickens on helium. As sheltered housekeeper Johanna in Liza Johnson’s proudly frustrating Hateship Loveship — a pun on the…
The most perfect works of art are those suspended between conception and realization, the ones that seize you up with how great they’re gonna be. (Well, those and Busby Berkeley numbers.) Alejandro Jodorowsky’s daft, daring, surrealist, possibly impossible adaptation of Dune, Frank Herbert’s spice-mining science-fiction novel that later proved unadaptable…
Has it ever occurred to contemporary commercial filmmakers that maybe audiences could take a movie’s word for it that a character has been tortured? That perhaps implication and skilled acting could communicate the idea with sufficient power so that we might all be spared the screaming and limb-breaking and slow-motion…
Ah, the Romanians — sometimes it seems like no one else is bothering to make movies for grown-ups anymore. Those of us with an abiding New Wave-y interest in human warts and tragic truth-telling have known, since 2005’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, to look to the Carpathians for dependable…
