It’s tempting, after watching the exceptional Museum Hours, to describe director Jem Cohen’s visual style as chiefly “observational.” The film, a kind of hybrid between understated drama and essayistic tourism, approaches its subjects with uncommon patience and curiosity, lingering over objects and faces as if to savor their aesthetic qualities,…
Movie stars shouldn’t be subject to the rules of gravity, as we mere mortals are. One of the great pleasures of watching actors is to see them move, and when yesterday’s youngsters start creaking, we feel it in our joints. That’s not to say actors can’t age gracefully, or that…
For anyone who’s been going to the movies at all regularly over the past 45 years, Woody Allen is practically family. His movies may draw fewer passionate responses than they did in the ’70s and ’80s, but we still feel compelled to reckon with him. Whenever Allen comes out with…
How would those Bronze Age storytellers who shaped and handed down the myths of Ancient Greece fare in a modern screenwriting seminar? All that elusive, improvisatory strangeness, that alien sense of causality, that emphasis on origins, not just of franchisable characters but of everything in the natural world, right down…
You can guess the plot of Disney’s Planes — it’s just Cars 2 with wings, an international romp that pits a humble country bumpkin against a fleet of literally jet-setting competitors in a race around the world. With pit stops in four continents, more cultural stereotypes than the Eurovision song…
If there’s one nuance mainstream comedies have yet to learn, it’s that “empathetic” need not mean “likable” — audiences can feel for characters they don’t necessarily want to be. The hit black comedy Horrible Bosses, which had three angry underlings plotting murderous vengeance against their you-know-whats, should have been a…
Writer-director Paul Andrew Williams’s Unfinished Song is a full-frontal attack on its audience’s tear ducts. Shamelessly manipulative, it’s a highly effective if not very good film, its success entirely due to the talents of its cast. They bring heart to a script that is unabashedly about pushing buttons. Vanessa Redgrave…
It’s time to say goodbye to the Miramar Playa. Magic City, the Starz television drama created by native Miamian Mitch Glazer, will end after its second season, the network announced yesterday. This Friday’s season finale will mark its final episode. See also: – Miami-Made Magic City Glams Up Miami Film…
We’ve made it to the mid-season mark; only six more episodes until Dexter comes to a complete end, and things are only just getting good. Last night, Zach Hamilton is the main focus of Dexter’s attention. As the episode begins, we see Dexter stalking his prey at a crime scene…
When Miami Monkey opened on Ocean Drive in May, we knew it wouldn’t be the last we’d see of its proprietor, Mob Wives reality TV star Big Ang. In fact, it was only the beginning. And if you’re familiar with the big-mouthed and bigger-breasted Ang, you know that, well, there’s…
A movie can be highly imperfect, stilted, or implausible in all sorts of ways — and still be everything you go to the movies for. The Canyons, Paul Schrader’s contemplation of moral decay in Hollywood, is that kind of picture, in some places so crazy-silly that you want to laugh…
All you need for a movie are two guys and two guns. Unless that movie is 2 Guns, in which case you probably need a good deal more. The problem with so many current action movies, this one included, is that once you’ve seen one, you can’t help feeling you’ve…
Alain Resnais’s You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet seems to make its high-concept setup clear the very moment it begins. After its cartoonish credits sweep through a thick bank of CG fog, we’re greeted by a catalog of the director’s regulars seen in cross-fades as they’re invited to a deceased friend’s…
Grouchy Smurf may change his tune and transform himself into “Positive Smurf” in The Smurfs 2, but Raja Gosnell’s insufferably frantic and goofy sequel isn’t apt to motivate similar conversions from those who detested his original 2011 live-action/CG hybrid. Gosnell’s follow-up is something of a nature-vs.-nurture tale focused on the…
The lauded “Golden Age” of television just makes Vince Gilligan sad. Let’s get specific: “The sadness for me at the heart of it is that television now makes stories for grown-ups that Hollywood movies don’t allow filmmakers to make,” the Breaking Bad creator/writer/director/producer said Sunday at New York’s Museum of…
Porn re-inserts itself into the arthouse with this week’s The Canyons, co-starring adult industry stud James Deen, and next week’s Lovelace, a biopic of the Deep Throat star–two highly publicized releases that reconfirm the hopelessness of going hardcore in mainstream movies. Whether it’s works that inject un-simulated sex into their…
Here’s something you would think we could all agree on: Rigid parts of the body probably shouldn’t go slack. But try asking a SeaWorld spokesperson about the drooping dorsal fins on so many of the park chain’s performing male orca, about that mighty spike that in the wild juts above…
File under Reasons to Love the Internet: Matt Damon went on Univision morning show Despierta América this week to promote his film Elysium, and the hosts made him play charades. And as if the language barrier weren’t enough of a challenge, they made him hold an adorable chihuahua dressed in…
Shout!FactoryThe cast of FridaysWhether you love it or hate it these days, it’s still tough to compete against Saturday Night Live. Although the show certainly has seen much better and much funnier days, you still can’t knock it off its perch after all these years. The powers that be that…
Journalism is a tough gig these days. Publications are losing money, and many are scaling back or even closing altogether. Many of the best and brightest have bailed into fields like public relations, corporate communications, and videography. You can hardly blame them. Everybody’s gotta eat. For many, new media is…
If you’re a fan of the retro drive-in movie theater experience but not a fan of long drives to Broward County or the semi-slimy ambiance of the Swap Shop, we have good news: A new drive-in, authentic all the way down to the vintage car speakers, is slated to open…
Last night’s opening scene with Dexter and Debra in a sort of “couples” therapy session with Vogel after their near-death experience was kind of ironic; it might be the closest Deb will get to living out last season’s fantasies of getting all romantic with Dex. But alas, the session is…
