"Slamdance Unstoppable: On the Road" at O Cinema
O Cinema has reopened its doors after a brief closure for renovation. The Miami Beach arthouse will start August with a series of films from Slamdance Unstoppable, showcasing filmmakers with disabilities, whose stories are less often told in mainstream cinema. According to IndieWire, 40 percent of ticket sales will go directly to the filmmakers. The series includes the following documentaries, each preceded by a short film: Loud Love, which follows a deaf gay couple attempting to build a family through international surrogacy when other options fail. Directed by Bing Wang. 7 p.m. Friday, August 1.
Life After investigates the life and legacy of Elizabeth Bouvia, a pioneer of the assisted dying movement who vanished from public view after years of activism. Directed by Reid Davenport, winner of the Directing Award for U.S. Documentary at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. 7 p.m. Saturday, August 2.
Disposable Humanity examines the Nazi extermination program T4 Aktion, which declared people with disabilities "life unworthy of living" and served as a forerunner to the broader program of genocide now known as the Holocaust. Directed by Cameron S. Mitchell. 7 p.m. Sunday, August 3. O Cinema, 1130 Washington Ave., Miami Beach; o-cinema.org. Tickets cost $10 to $12.50.
Barry Lyndon 4K Restoration at Gables
Barry Lyndon has had a strange journey over the last few decades. Once considered a lesser film in Stanley Kubrick's oeuvre, the 1975 period masterpiece has grown in esteem (in part thanks to a legendary fancam edit set to 21 Savage's "A Lot") to the point that its reputation arguably rivals The Shining and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Barry Lyndon has been restored in 4K and will screen for one afternoon only at Coral Gables Art Cinema. This is a presentation few cinephiles will want to miss. Our Take: That 21 Savage edit does hint at Barry Lyndon's deceptively cutthroat sensibility: Beneath the frilly garments and grand architecture is a rags-to-riches tale of one devious Irishman's blood-soaked ambition, taking him from the battlefields of the Seven Years' War to the country manors of the English nobility. Along with the excitement of learning "By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style and Title of Barry Lyndon," Kubrick packs the film with such sumptuous imagery that every frame looks like a historical painting. The legendarily exacting director famously shot the film entirely with natural light, resulting in an aesthetic that feels authentic without sacrificing an inch of beauty. 1:30 p.m. Saturday, August 2 at Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; 786-472-2249; gablescinema.com. Tickets cost $10 to $11.75.
Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, and Sanjuro at Coral Gables Art Cinema
The Summer of Kurosawa (Kuro-summer?) continues at Coral Gables Art Cinema, with 4K restorations of many of the legendary director's major films. This month, we're highlighting three of his best samurai epics: the Shakespeare adaptation Throne of Blood, the action-packed Yojimbo, and its sequel Sanjuro.Our Take: As with Ran, Kurosawa's distinctive take on the doom and dread of Shakespearean tragedy — this time he takes on Macbeth — goes far beyond updating the setting to feudal Japan. Throne of Blood (the original title translates to "Spiderweb Castle") is one of the greatest film adaptations of the Bard, translating the play into an austere, spooky rendering of lust for power and paranoia that inspired later takes such as Joel Coen's recent The Tragedy of Macbeth. The famed climax, in which a manic Toshiro Mifune in the title role dodged real arrows, is worth the price of admission alone. 10 p.m. Thursday, August 7, and 1:30 p.m. Sunday, August 10.
Mifune also stars in Yojimbo and Sanjuro as a relentlessly clever and ruthlessly effective ronin warrior. Doing battle with a town full of gangsters in the former, and helping a samurai clan topple their corrupt chamberlain in the latter, the two films have proven profoundly influential, each in its own unique way. Film buffs know the story of Sergio Leone ripping off Yojimbo for his spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars, but the blood splatter ending of Sanjuro, in which a malfunctioning special effect caused fake fluid to spurt from a slain character's costume, was a watershed moment in Japanese action cinema. Samurai films from this point on would be bathed in red, influencing future filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino. Yojimbo screens at 10 p.m. Thursday, August 21, and 3:30 p.m. Sunday, August 24. Sanjuro screens at 10 p.m. Thursday, August 28, and 1 p.m. Monday, September 1. Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; 786-472-2249; gablescinema.com. Tickets cost $10 to $11.75.
"Drag Me to Pretty Woman" at Rooftop Cinema Club
Miami Beach's Rooftop Cinema Club partners with Drag Me to the Movies for a program combining Hollywood classics with drag performances. This month they're showing the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman, directed by Garry Marshall and starring Julia Roberts in a star-making performance as an escort with a heart of gold and Richard Gere as the corporate raider who falls in love with her. Imagine Anora if Hollywood had its way with it and swapped all the gritty realism and class commentary with true romance and a fairy-tale happy ending. Sunday, August 10 at Rooftop Cinema Club South Beach, 1212 Lincoln Rd., Sixth Level, Miami Beach; rooftopcinemaclub.com. Tickets cost $27 to $35.
Orpheus at Miami-Dade County Main Library
AV Club continues its series on surrealism in film with a screening of Jean Cocteau's wonderfully strange 1950 adaptation of the Ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Translating the story to postwar Paris, the third film in Cocteau's trilogy casts his then-lover, legendary French screen star Jean Marais, as the title hero, a poet who descends into the underworld to save his wife. The film's magical imagery has inspired generations of filmmakers, such as Luca Guadagnino, who included scenes from it in last year's Queer. As always, the movie will be shown on a print from the library's impressive collection of 16mm films. 3 p.m. Saturday, August 23, at the Miami-Dade County Main Library, 101 W Flagler St., Miami; 305-375-2665; mdpls.org. 
The Room, Hosted by Greg Sestero at Coral Gables Art Cinema
The best worst movie ever made is back in Miami. Director Tommy Wiseau's legendary cinematic clunker The Room is returning to Coral Gables Art Cinema for the first time since 2018. Cast member Greg Sestero has turned the film into a rollicking live road show, and he'll be on hand as master of ceremonies. The theater will also screen the Miami premiere of Wiseau and Sestero's latest flick, the New Orleans-set monster movie Big Shark. Our Take: "Worst movie ever" might be an overblown label for The Room. By any measure, it's not a well-made film: It looks cheap, the plot is bizarre and inscrutable, and the performances from Wiseau and the handful of no-name actors are a mix of comically inept and making the best of a bad situation. Watching it is certainly a useful way to study what not to do in the director's chair. But there's entertainment value, at least. Much like Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis, a terrible movie that cost a hundred times as much as The Room to make, the film is relentlessly quotable ("You are tearing me apart, Lisa!") and shamelessly ridiculous. Can a movie that guarantees a good time at the theater be truly bad? Attend this screening to find out. 11 p.m. Saturday, August 30, and 8:15 p.m. Sunday, August 31, at Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; 786-472-2249; gablescinema.com. Tickets cost $10 to $11.75.
