Hearts of Palm, world-premiering at the Miami International Film Festival this week, sorrowfully repeats the phrase “El la amaba y ella lo amaba” (“He loved her and she loved him”). The repetition emphasizes what audiences know from the moment the movie begins: filmmaker Monica Peña is telling a story about…
Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato are riding high on the buzz from their documentary’s first screening at Miami Dade College’s Miami International Film Festival. They were surprised at the amount of moving comments they heard from festival goers who stood up to ask questions after the East Coast Premiere of…
Miami-based documentary filmmaker Orlando Rojas feels a bit anxious. His first film in nearly 15 years is having its world premiere at the grandest venue of Miami Dade College’s 33rd-annual Miami International Film Festival: the Olympia Theater. Nearly two weeks before the premiere, Rojas was still tinkering with the sound…
A legitimate stunner in that word’s truest sense, Colombian director Ciro Guerra’s river-trip Embrace of the Serpent mesmerizes and jacks with you, leaving you not quite certain, at its end, how to go about the rest of your day. The film is beautiful and ferocious, calm and torrential, a plunge…
Since the dawn of the revolution, Cuba’s state-sponsored cinema has been controversial and intellectually crafted. In the 1960s, Memories of Underdevelopment and De Cierta Manera marked a golden age of nuanced social critique within the confines of the revolution’s dismal sense of humor. But the Special Period wrought dire economic circumstances, forcing the…
It’s a new month, so that means a new list of classic movies. March offers an abundance of films in Miami, specifically because of the Miami International Film Festival happening the first two weeks, but that doesn’t mean the cinemas are stopping the good ol’ classics, though. Here’s what your…
The third season of Broad City (Comedy Central) opens with a toilet-centric montage that already feels like one of the year’s TV highlights. At once exuberant, absurd and all-too-real, a split screen reveals besties Ilana (Ilana Glazer) and Abbi (Abbi Jacobson) living their best lives in their respective bathrooms. They…
Miami is a relatively young city, so few of its buildings have been standing for more than a century. The Tower Theater, on SW Eighth Street, is close enough to that triple-digit number. Built in 1926, the movie theater celebrates its 90th birthday this year. Throughout the decades, it has…
Now that the Oscars are over, serious movie fans can explore film without the hype awards ceremonies. Miami-Dade College’s 33rd Miami International Film Festival will be a haven for those cinephiles, says Jaie Laplante, the festival’s director of programming six years running. Speaking via phone, he recommended five lesser-known films he…
Two movies, same scenario: Moments before a scheduled execution, just as the blade or gas pellet is set to deliver its fatal blow, the hero bursts into the room and carries the victim to safety. Banter is exchanged: “What took you so long?” “Traffic was a bitch.” “What took you…
The last place Shaina Allen expected to find inspiration for her directorial debut and first feature film was at a dog park along Biscayne Bay. Well, technically, she didn’t — someone else did. Allen would occasionally run into a man named Parnes Cartwright and his wife Betsy. Casual conversations led to…
Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos burst onto the international film scene in 2009 with the disturbing Oscar-nominated family drama, Dogtooth. Now he emerges with his English-language debut. The Lobster takes place in a dystopian future where people must pair off as lovers within 45 days or be turned into the animal…
The title of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa’s strained dark comedy, in which the War in Afghanistan serves as the backdrop to an American woman’s self-actualizing journey, is the military phonetic-alphabet rendering of WTF. The mild Islamophobia and highly questionable casting choices in the film call to mind other texting…
What if Terrence Malick directed an episode of Entourage? Well, we’re about to find out, sort of. In Knight of Cups, the director of Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life turns his roaming camera and ruminating voiceovers toward Los Angeles and the movie business,…
In Zootopia, animals do a lot of the things that animals in Disney movies usually do: They speak, to begin with; they walk upright and wear funny clothes; they exhibit attitudes that align or ironically misalign with their species’ appearance and reputation; they hold jobs; they experience outsize emotion and…
This year’s Miami International Film Festival includes one program so intensely native to the city that it’s titled “I’ve Never Not Been From Miami.” Premiering Monday, March 7, at the Olympia Theater, it includes ten short films that pair top independent filmmakers with vital artists. For many of those involved,…
This year, the Miami International Film Festival dedicates a significant portion of its lineup to female filmmakers. If you don’t have time to make it through the 20-plus films by women at the festival this year, check out our picks. Honorable Mention: WeinerEven before its debut at Sundance, Weiner had…
Using a single handheld camera, Israeli director Ido Haar spent several months in New Orleans with singer Princess Shaw. He claimed he was making a documentary about YouTube singers. In truth, he was documenting the raw beginnings of a viral video. It turns out a YouTube artist from Israel named…
The main offices for the 33rd-annual Miami International Film Festival (MIFF) are hidden within the 91-year-old Freedom Tower on Biscayne Boulevard. On a recent windy Monday morning, Jaie Laplante, the festival’s director of programming, laces his fingers around a paper coffee cup in the building’s shadow and shows off the…
Let’s give Gods of Egypt this much: An hour in, a giant cobra crashes and explodes like a bad guy’s car in a dumb movie from the ’70s. That snake, one of two in Alex Proyas’ film, is wide as a locomotive and long as a parade. It’s also straddled…
We’ve all been there. You finally get around to watching this year’s nominees, and you think, “Didn’t I see pretty much this same Oscar-bait movie last year?” You probably did, thanks to the McKee/Weinstein-driven formula behind most Best Picture noms. You can even build your own! Just mix and match…
If you’ve wondered just why Hollywood now so aggressively courts Chinese viewers, look no further than The Mermaid. In just two weeks of release, Stephen Chow’s fantastical comedy has already brought in $430 million in its home country, making it China’s highest-grossing release ever. (It’s doing well here, too, having…
