The Best Movies You Can Only See in Miami in July

We're in the dog days of summer right now, and there's no better place to be than the air-conditioned confines of a movie theater. Thankfully, there are plenty of options to choose from in Miami, including indie and art house classics, family favorites, and some fantastic animated works. Find our picks for the best films to see in July below.

Last Call Cinema at Gramps

Gramps isn't just one of the last vestiges of the "old, weird Wynwood" — it's also becoming a great spot for local cinema via its indoor venue, Shirley's Theater. AV Club frequently hosts screenings there, and Subtropic Film Festival's monthly Last Call Cinema series returns this month as well. The short film program focusing on South Florida stories will present a selection of films from their recent appearance at III Joints, including works by Peter Mir, Olivia Pedigo, Mumbi O'Brien, Crumax, and other local filmmakers. 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 23 at Gramps, 176 NW 24th St., Miami; 305-699-2669; gramps.com. $12 via zeffy.com.

Kurosawa's Ran 4K Restoration at Coral Gables Art Cinema

There is perhaps no greater filmmaker than Akira Kurosawa, once called the "Beethoven of movie directors" by Sidney Lumet of 12 Angry Men and Network fame. Over the course of his decades-spanning career, Kurosawa brought the art of cinema to new heights, put the Japanese film industry on the international movie map, and inspired the likes of George Lucas and Sergio Leone. Now, theaters across the country — including Coral Gables Art Cinema — are running a new series of 4K restorations of his films. The Summer of Kurosawa series starts this month with Rashomon (in 2K instead of 4K) on July 17 and 20, Ikiru on July 31 and August 3, and the highlight, the late-period epic Ran on July 23 and 27.

Our Take: If Ran ("Chaos") is not the greatest Shakespeare adaptation ever put to screen, that's only because it's rivaled by Kurosawa's own Throne of Blood. Nevertheless, the 1985 adaptation of King Lear is certainly one of the director's most spectacular films, depicting the ruination of a prideful, increasingly-senile samurai lord and his entire clan in sumptuous color and on a scale of legend — the samurai castle that burns down in the film, for instance, was an actual set built for the film on the slopes of Mt. Fuji. Kurosawa regular Tatsuya Nakadai gives the performance of his career as the mad Lord Hidetora, who spirals from ruthless daimyo into a haunted shell of a man, his face twisted into a ghostly, kabuki-esque mask of horror. Meanwhile, Mieko Harada steals the show as the vengeful, scheming Lady Kaede, one of the few truly exceptional female roles in Kurosawa's macho filmography. If there's one film in this series that's unmissable in theaters, it's this one. 9:45 p.m. Wednesday, July 23, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, July 27, at Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; 786-472-2249; gablescinema.com. Tickets cost $10 to $11.75.

Tangerine and Nights of Cabiria at Coral Gables Art Cinema

Coral Gables Art Cinema is celebrating Art House Theater Day on July 23 with a pair of extraordinary films that center sex workers. Federico Fellini's 1957 drama Nights of Cabiria casts his wife and muse Giulietta Masina as the titular prostitute, an idealist but not an innocent, wandering through the ragged streets and glitzy nightclubs of postwar Rome. A transitory work between the neorealist period of Fellini's early career and his more glamorous later works, and featuring dialogue from Pier Paolo Pasolini, the film won Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards and Best Actress at Cannes. Meanwhile, recent Oscar winner Sean Baker's early film Tangerine, celebrating its tenth anniversary, will screen the same day. Following a pair of transgender sex workers across Los Angeles as they chase down a cheating pimp, the film was pioneering in a few ways: for its exploration of trans themes and Baker's examinations of the lives of sex workers (culminating in Palme d'Or and Oscar-winner Anora) and for the way it was made. The film was shot entirely on a trio of tricked-out iPhones, preceding recent use of the tech by Steven Soderbergh on Unsane and Danny Boyle on 28 Years Later. 5 p.m. Thursday, July 24, at Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; 786-472-2249; gablescinema.com. Tickets cost $10 to $11.75.

AV Club at Miami Beach Botanical Garden

Summer is in full bloom on the beach thanks to AV Club. In addition to events at Gramps and the Miami-Dade County Main Library, the film series hosts two screenings this month at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden on July 12 and 26. Presented in complement to workshops and classes at the garden, AV Club will show botanically-themed films from the library's 16mm film collection underneath the Cinema Canopy. 8 p.m. Thursday, July 12 and Thursday, July 26, at Miami Beach Botanical Garden, 2000 Convention Center Dr., Miami Beach; 305-673-7256; mbgarden.org. Admission is free.

Past July Screenings:

AV Club: Surrealist Animation at Gramps

AV Club is very busy this month, which is why we're highlighting a few of its programs in this month's column. On July 9 at Gramps, New Times film critic Juan Barquin is putting on a program of surrealist animation — these aren't your average cartoons, in other words, but animated short films working in the tradition of surrealism. Animators from five different countries are represented, including Polish filmmakers Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica (House), Frenchman and Fantastic Planet director René Laloux (The Snails), and Japanese alternative animator Yōji Kuri (Ai!, Pop). Anime can be pretty weird, but these films might just be weirder and more wonderful. 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 9, at Gramps, 176 NW 24th St., Miami; 305-699-2669; gramps.com. Admission is free.

Shall We Dance? (1996) at MDC Koubek Center

Dance over to the Koubek Center on July 2, because the Miami Film Festival is hosting a special screening of a newly restored classic this month. Less well-known in this country than the 2004 American remake starring Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez, Japanese director Masayuki Suo's 1996 film Shall We Dance follows the same steps: A listless corporate drone (Kōji Yakusho), enervated by his boring career and mundane life, sees a beautiful woman in the window of a dance studio and decides to take it up. Unexpectedly, he soon finds that ballroom dancing has given his life the meaning he's been looking for — now he just has to keep his secret passion away from his disapproving family. The film featured the breakout of the now-legendary Yakusho, famed for his roles in the Kiyoshi Kurosawa thriller Cure and Wim Wenders' healing drama Perfect Days. While it swept the Japan Academy Film Prize back home with 14 trophies, its original release by Miramax in the states was botched thanks to aggressive cuts made by the Weinstein brothers. It can now be seen in its original glory, restored in 4K. 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 2, at the Koubek Center, 2705 SW Third St., Miami; 305-237-7749; koubekcenter.org. Reserve seats at miamifilmfestival.com.

Fantasia at Savor Cinema

Fort Lauderdale's Savor Cinema is debuting its new sound system with an animated musical spectacle, the Disney classic Fantasia. Best known for the famous "Sorcerer Mickey" vignette, the visionary film isn't just a pioneering fusion of sound and visuals. It's also the first commercial film shown in stereo, which makes it an appropriate choice for testing the theater's audio enhancements. Featuring a full orchestral soundtrack conducted by legendary maestro Leopold Stokowski, Fantasia also serves as a great way to brush up on the classical music pieces it helped to make famous. See marvelous abstract shapes dance along to Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" (the original haunted house music), dinosaurs battle along with Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, Greek mythological characters frolic against Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, and the grand finale, a devilish take on Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain. 6:30 p.m. Thursday, July 10, at Savor Cinema, 503 SE Sixth St., Fort Lauderdale; 954-525-3456. Tickets cost $20 via fliff.com.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial at Coral Gables Art Cinema

Nobody does family films quite like Steven Spielberg, who's made a monumental career out of sci-fi and adventure movies from Jaws and Indiana Jones to Jurassic Park and Ready Player One. Few of his films have been more successful, however, than E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, the 1982 film about a suburban California boy befriending a lost alien that briefly surpassed the original Star Wars to become the highest-grossing film of all time. The story of young Elliot's (Henry Thomas) quest to fend off government agents and return his new friend E.T. to his rightful place in space has enchanted multiple generations thanks to successive re-releases, including a controversial 2002 edit that removed firearms from the film and a 2022 IMAX version. There have also been plenty of commercial tie-ins, including the E.T. Adventure ride at Universal Studios Florida and the ill-fated Atari 2600 video game. Coral Gables Art Cinema is screening two showings over the weekend of July 12 and 13 — that means you have two chances to experience the adventure all over again. 11 a.m. Saturday, July 12 and Sunday, July 13, at Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; 786-472-2249; gablescinema.com. Tickets cost $10 to $11.75.