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Miami isn’t getting any colder as the end of the year approaches, but the film scene is still getting festive. Screenings of Christmas classics are happening at local theaters, while counterprogramming can be found in Oscar contenders from Latin America and sinful surrealist films screening at AV Club. Considering the diverse options, here are the best films to see in Miami this month.
Barron Scherer Presents “Co-op Cohort!” at Oolite Arts
Local video artist Barron Scherer presents an exhibition of film and video art made on Lincoln Road in the mid-1990s. Driven by Mark Boswell and William Keddell, the Alliance Film/Video Cooperative (“the Co-op”) established a whole community of D.I.Y. and experimental filmmakers in and around Miami Beach, supported by venues like the Alliance Cinema. The short-lived scene scattered as rents rose on the beach, but Scherer’s documentary exhibition at their former headquarters, now Oolite Arts, provides insight into the creativity and ingenuity of the time. The show opened on Wednesday, November 19, and runs through Sunday, January 18. Oolite Arts, 924 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach; 305-674-8278; oolitearts.org.
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The Muppets Christmas Carol at Coral Gables Art Cinema
If you’re worried about the literacy crisis in America, get the family to drop the phones, quit yapping with ChatGPT, and engage with a beloved classic of festive literature. Not interested? What if there were muppets involved? Perhaps the most popular version of Charles Dickens’ Victorian holiday tale, The Muppets Christmas Carol features all your favorite fuzzy felt friends playing out the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, the cruel capitalist moneylender made generous by three visiting spirits on Christmas Eve. We get Kermit as Bob Cratchit, Statler and Waldorf as Jacob and Robert Marley, Fozzie Bear as Fezziwig — sorry, Fozziwig — and legendary character actor Michael Caine as Scrooge. AI-generated Christmas ads may be all the rage nowadays, but watch this wonderful tribute to filmmaking craft, and you’ll find they’re nothing but humbug! 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, December 16, at Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; 786-472-2249; gablescinema.com. Tickets cost $11.75.
Avatar: Fire and Ash at Autonation IMAX Theater
It’s time to go back to Pandora. James Cameron’s sci-fi epic Avatar saga returns with a climactic third installment, and as usual, the best way to see it is at the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale. Its Autonation IMAX Theater is showing the film in High Frame Rate IMAX 3D, rendering the alien world of the Na’vi in spectacular, hyperreal glory.
Our Take: Picking up right where The Way of Water left off, former space marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) continues to lead the Na’vi resistance against human colonization of Pandora alongside his family. He’ll once again have to contend with his resurrected nemesis, Col. Miles Quarich (Stephen Lang), who has recruited the treacherous Ash People, a heretical clan of raiders who lost their homelands to a volcanic eruption and prey on their fellow Na’vi. Cameron’s third film deepens the world of Pandora while providing plenty of outstanding action sequences and visual splendor; the alien world is as jaw-dropping and enticing as ever, and as the director insists in a preshow speech directed at the audience, it’s all thanks to the world of artists, not AI. While the newfound familiarity in the setting may result in this third film lacking the same emotional impact as its predecessors — Way of Water benefitted from a 13-year gap following the original film that made it all the more magical to finally come back to the alien world — Avatar remains an unrivalled cinematic experience that still brings wonder and excitement and reminds us to reflect on the beauty worth protecting in our own world. From Thursday, December 18, at the Autonation IMAX 3D Theater, 401 SW Second St., Fort Lauderdale; 954-467-6637; mods.org. Tickets cost $18 to $21.
Die Hard at Coral Gables Art Cinema
Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker! Perhaps the most famous example of Christmas movie counterprogramming, John McTiernan’s 1988 actioner is always a fantastic option for a holiday movie when you’re in the mood for skyscrapers exploding instead of chestnuts roasting — technically it’s set on Christmas Eve, after all. The film made a star out of its lead, Bruce Willis, who had his breakout role as desperate NYPD detective John McClane, and future Professor Snape Alan Rickman as the villainous terrorist Hans Gruber. The underdog action hero’s attempts to save the Nakatomi Towers influenced generations of movies to come, including Speed, Con Air, and White House Down. 10 p.m. Saturday, December 20, at Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; 786-472-2249; gablescinema.com. Tickets cost $11.75.
The Secret Agent at Coral Gables Art Cinema
Winner of both Best Director and Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival this year, Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Oscar-contending political thriller The Secret Agent expands to Miami this week with a one-week run at Coral Gables Art Cinema.
Our Take: Americans can learn a lot about our current era of political turmoil by watching Brazilian cinema. Last year’s I’m Still Here won an Oscar for its stirring depiction of life under a regime that kidnaps and disappears its political opponents, a setting that proved predictive of the Trump Administration’s urban military occupations and ICE detention centers like Alligator Alcatraz. The Secret Agent picks up a few years after that film, in 1977, as repression has given way to lawlessness. Corpses litter the streets, and severed legs inspire tasteless B movies. Amid this time of “mischief,” Armando (Wagner Moura), a scientist turned political refugee, must live like a spy, taking on an assumed identity while fleeing a well-connected businessman who wants him dead. Drawing comparisons to Tarantino, former film critic-turned-director Mendonça Filho fills the film with cinephilic details, strategically shocking violence, and a tense, operatic action climax. Yet its political perspective, looking back on the dictatorship and its abuses, sets it apart as a potent and thoughtful political thriller, one we can look to in our own troubles. Thursday, December 25, through Thursday, January 1, at Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; 786-472-2249; gablescinema.com. Tickets cost $11.75.
Past December Screenings:
One Battle After Another in IMAX 70mm at Autonation IMAX Theater
You’ll have one more chance this year to see Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest epic in the biggest and best possible way. The film is screening for one week only in IMAX 70mm at the Museum of Discovery and Science’s Autonation IMAX Theater, one of the only venues in the country equipped for the unique large-scale format.
Our Take: It’s a testament to Paul Thomas Anderson’s skill as a filmmaker that the first hour of One Battle After Another could be its own movie, and yet once we’ve witnessed the rise and fall of the leftist revolutionaries known as the French 75, it feels like twenty minutes have gone by. Then the real fun begins as burnout ex-militant Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) goes running after his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) as she makes her own flight from nefarious officer Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Immigration raids, improbable escapes, and one absurdly tense car chase down a desert road ensue, all filmed with an extraordinary level of finesse and forward momentum. Even then, the film goes far beyond simply being an uproariously entertaining thrill-ride filled to the brim with once-in-a-generation performances and brilliant action. In adapting Thomas Pynchon’s tale of fugitive freedom fighters, Vineland, Paul Thomas Anderson has adeptly captured the zeitgeist, channeling the chaos and wrath of a contemporary America infected by militant racism run amok. One Battle After Another is far and away the best American movie of the year and a testament to what Hollywood could achieve if it supported such original visions a little more often. Friday, December 12, through Wednesday, December 17, at the Autonation IMAX Theater, 401 SW Second St., Fort Lauderdale; 954-467-6637; mods.org. Tickets cost $18 to $21.
Janus Films
Viridiana at Main Library
‘Tis the season for surrealism…and sin. AV Club’s Intro to Surrealism series continues with one of the most controversial films of all time, Luis Buñuel’s bold and controversial satire of Franco’s Spain, Viridiana, from 1961.
Our Take: Sister Viridiana (Silvia Pinal), a nun about to take her vows, is ordered by her mother superior to visit Don Jaime (Fernando Rey), an uncle living in a half-abandoned mansion in the Spanish countryside, and her last living relative. She never returns to the convent, as Don Jaime’s dark and sordid designs on his niece — blonde, buxom, and a dead ringer for his dead wife — conspire to keep her in the house and test the limits of her faith. Viridiana was Buñuel’s first film made in his homeland after years of exile following the Spanish Civil War, and he unsparingly depicts the country as a land of moral contrasts: tradition versus modernity, aristocracy versus peasantry, and propriety versus perversity. The film captivated contemporary audiences in the early ‘60s, winning the Palme d’Or, as much as it earned the ire of conservative authorities: The Spanish government, still under the control of fascist dictator Franco, banned it. The Vatican declared it nothing short of “blasphemous.” Today, it stands as an undeniable influence on Spanish cinema, inspiring a tradition of provocateurs in Pedro Almodóvar, Bigas Luna, and others. 2 p.m. Saturday, December 13, at Main Library, 101 W. Flagler St., Miami; 305-375-2665; mdpls.org. Admission is free.
