Shuichi Yoshida/ASP/Kokuho Film Partners/GKIDS
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January is usually a sleepy time for new movies, with most film fans focusing on awards season and studios releasing their least inspiring new films into multiplexes. Thanks to Miami’s independent theaters and programmers, however, there’s always something good on offer here. This month’s local screenings feature an Oscar contender from Japan, cult movies from the ‘80s, and shorts from the Sundance Film Festival. Here are the best films to see in Miami this month.
Big Trouble in Little China at Coral Gables Art Cinema
John Carpenter’s weird and wonderful tribute to Hong Kong cinema, Big Trouble in Little China, screens as a part of Coral Gables Art Cinema’s After Hours lineup this month.
Our Take: Big Trouble in Little China is proof that some of the best films are the hardest to summarize. Case in point: This film follows bumbling, soulful white-boy truck driver Jack Burton (Kurt Russell, doing his best John Wayne impression), who, along with his Chinese-American best friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun), unlocks a conspiracy involving triad gangsters, wuxia warriors, subterranean cryptids, and an immortal Qin Dynasty sorcerer named David Lo Pan (James Hong). The film became a cult classic despite flopping upon release, largely thanks to director Carpenter’s efforts to mix action, fantasy, and screwball comedy — aided by stellar practical effects — with a more authentic and respectful portrayal of Asian-American culture in an era when this was far from the norm (looking at you, John Hughes). 10 p.m. Saturday, January 24, at Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; 786-472-2249; gablescinema.com. Tickets cost $10 to $11.75.
Hard Boiled at AMC Sunset Place
John Woo remains one of the most influential action movie directors in the world, but for years, his lauded Hong Kong work, including classics like The Killer (1989) and A Better Tomorrow, had been unavailable in the U.S. due to rights issues. Those problems were finally resolved last year, and now one of Woo’s greatest works, the 1992 thriller Hard Boiled, has been restored in 4K and will screen for three nights in area theaters this month. The film is being shown in three Miami AMC locations — Sunset Place, Aventura, and Tamiami — as well as Regal Kendall Village.
Our Take: Hard Boiled is one of the greatest action films ever made and the indisputable peak of Hong Kong action cinema. While it’s not John Woo’s most representative film — his unique mixing of intense melodrama and balletic gunplay, termed “heroic bloodshed” by critic Rick Baker, would reach its peak in The Killer — it is the apex of the director’s prowess as an action director and a potent pairing of two major Hong Kong stars in Chow Yun-fat and Tony Leung Chiu-wai. The film follows two men on opposite sides of the law tracking the same triad boss: Loose-cannon cop Tequila (Yun-fat) wants to take down arms dealer Johnny (Anthony Wong) as revenge for his partner’s death, while slick and dangerous assassin Alan (Chiu-wai) gets close to the gangster for his own reasons. The plot is functional and mostly a means of stringing together the film’s three main action setpieces: A brutal teahouse shootout, an explosive warehouse battle between rival triad gangs, and the grand finale, a massive confrontation between police and hoods in a hospital that takes up the film’s entire back half. Woo fills his shots with enough blood, explosions, and pyrotechnics to bankrupt a small country, but it’s his quick-cut editing, slow-motion cinematography, and other expressive touches that truly set the film apart. 7 p.m. Sunday, January 25, Monday, January 26, and Wednesday, January 28, at AMC Sunset Place, 5701 Sunset Dr. #300, South Miami; 305-740-8904; amctheatres.com.
Fourth Act Film/Grasshopper Film photo
Key Biscayne Film Festival
The Key Biscayne Film Festival is back for a third year, with screenings taking place in the Paradise Theater inside Town Hall, and outdoors at Paradise Park on the final weekend of January. The lineup comprises mostly documentaries and includes films with a local focus (River of Grass, Naked Ambition) as well as others addressing national issues (Blue Zeus, News Without A Newsroom). There are also portraits of famous figures (Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore), along with a handful of fiction films. Every screening will feature a post-film Q&A, and opening and closing parties will be held on Friday and Sunday. Thursday, January 29, through Sunday, February 1, at Paradise Cinema, 560 Crandon Blvd., and Paradise Park, 530 Crandon Blvd., Key Biscayne. Tickets cost $20 to $50 via kbfilmfestival.org.
No Other Choice at O Cinema
The latest film from master Korean director Park Chan-wook has been a bit hard to track down since its limited release in December of last year (opening concurrently with Avatar and Marty Supreme probably didn’t help much). Thankfully, O Cinema is showing the film starting January 30 for those who have yet to experience one of the best films of this awards season.
Our Take: When we reviewed the film in October, ahead of its screening at MFF’s GEMS, New Times called No Other Choice “an astonishing, balletically directed tour de force that lives up to [Chan-wook’s] best work.” 7 p.m. Friday, January 30, at O Cinema South Beach, 1130 Washington Ave., Miami Beach; o-cinema.org. Tickets cost $10 to $12.50.
The Fly at Coral Gables Art Cinema
David Cronenberg’s body horror masterpiece The Fly screens at Coral Gables Art Cinema this month as part of the theater’s After Hours lineup.
Our Take: I have never been as physically repulsed by a film as I was by The Fly, yet I was simultaneously moved nearly to tears. Remaking the 1958 mad scientist B-movie, Cronenberg’s update casts Jeff Goldblum as idealistic researcher Seth Brundle, whose experimental transporter technology accidentally blends his DNA with that of a common fly. The result is unbearable to watch: Seth’s body begins to fall apart as he transforms into a grotesque monster, the “Brundlefly,” eventually losing all connection with his humanity. Cronenberg employs some of the most effective (and most disgusting) special effects ever used in film to manifest the physical trauma of Seth’s mutation, turning an exploitative premise into a potent exploration of disease and mortality (indeed, critics at the time treated the film as an AIDS allegory). Even among the director’s many films exploring the ways human bodies and minds cohabit with science and technology, The Fly is a landmark. 10 p.m. Saturday, January 31, at Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; 786-472-2249; gablescinema.com. Tickets cost $10 to $11.75.
Shuichi Yoshida/ASP/Kokuho Film Partners/GKIDS
Past January Screenings:
Kokuho at Koubek Center
A phenomenon in its home country, Kokuho, Japan’s submission for the Oscars’ Best International Film award this year, has become the nation’s all-time highest-grossing domestic live-action film. The film, by director Lee Sang-il, mixes a yakuza crime thriller with a dive into the world of kabuki theatre, where men play both male and female parts, and the names of celebrated actors are hereditary titles. When the son of a slain yakuza boss is taken in by the head of a legendary kabuki family (Ken Watanabe of Inception and Tokyo Vice), his prodigious talent rivals that of the family’s son and presumed heir to the title. The two boys’ rivalry develops further as time goes on, and both seek to become a kokuho, a living national treasure. Painstaking effort was made to ensure the film’s authenticity, with lead actor Ryo Yoshizawa training for a year and a half under a kabuki master and director Lee casting actual kabuki actors as both consultants and onscreen performers. The screening is open only to Miami Film Festival members; the lowest tier costs $65 and offers discounts to festival screenings and other benefits. 7 p.m. Wednesday, January 14, at the Koubek Center, 2705 SW Third St., Miami; 305-237-7749; miamifilmfestival.com.
Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour at O Cinema South Beach
Just as Sundance celebrates its final edition in Park City, Utah, before decamping to Colorado next year, O Cinema is screening some of the best shorts of the vaunted independent film festival’s 2025 edition. The block of seven films features live action, animated, and nonfiction shorts from Mexico, Cambodia, and Czechia. Viewers will encounter stories of a high school debate club arguing over minimum wage (“Debaters”), a grandmother interfering in her queer grandson’s love life (“Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites”), Vietnam War refugees used as extras in Apocalypse Now (“We Were the Scenery”), and more. 7 p.m. Friday, January 16, at O Cinema South Beach, 1130 Washington Ave., Miami Beach; o-cinema.org. Tickets cost $10 to $12.50.
AV Club: Surrealism Through The Decades at Main Library
AV Club continues its surrealism series with a screening of 16mm films from the movement’s prewar heyday to the 1980s. The highlight of “Surrealism Through The Decades” is Luis Buñuel’s 1965 film, Simon of the Desert (Simón del desierto), his Mexico-made follow-up to the taboo-busting Viridiana, based on the life of an early Christian ascetic, Saint Simeon, who lived atop a pillar for 36 years. The program also includes experimental silent films by René Clair and Man Ray, the beloved and influential American female surrealist Maya Deren’s film At Land, and a macabre stop-motion claymation short by Czech animator Jan Švankmajer. 2 p.m. Saturday, January 17, at Main Library, 101 W. Flagler St., Miami; 305-375-2665; mdpls.org. Admission is free.
