The Miami Jewish Film Festival returns this month with an exciting and progressive lineup, punctuated by spotlights on women and first-time filmmakers, live music performances, and other events. It’ll be impossible to catch all 80 films during the fest’s two-week run. So New Times film critics Juan Antonio Barquin and Hans Morgenstern have narrowed their picks to these four standouts.
It has been 32 years since Oliver Stone’s Platoon hit movie theaters, riding a wave of critical acclaim to four Oscars, including best picture and best director. The movie about the slow destruction of a group of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam remains an unforgettable moviemaking experience for the actors involved,…
ArtCenter/South Florida has announced its two first Cinematic Arts Residents. Xavier Medina and Monica Sorelle will each receive $50,000 to produce feature films in the City of Miami. It’s an unprecedented budget for these filmmakers to make independent movies guided by experts with successful careers in the industry. Dennis Scholl,…
For its sixth edition, FilmGate is upping its annual interactive media festival to a new level. Last year, the fest premiered 12 virtual reality (VR) experiences. This year FilmGate Interactive Media Festival #06 will offer 50, thanks to a new partnership with the University of Miami, and the school’s mission…
Thursday: Put down the potatoes — you have to earn them first! Turkey Trot Miami is back, providing locals with the perfect opportunity for some exercise before properly gaining ten pounds on Thanksgiving. There’s a 5K, 10K, and kids’ race, all of which weave in and around Tropical Park. So…
Much of what makes Wildlife, the feature directorial debut by actor Paul Dano, so distinctive is its look. Capturing suburban Montana in 1960 and the disintegration of a small family through the eyes of the parents’ only son, Wildlife needed a crew with a delicate touch to capture the characters…
Poetry is best read aloud. That’s a known fact of literary nature. But what becomes of it when it’s stamped into a concrete sidewalk? Miami-based artist Agustina Woodgate devised a scheme to see how that would play out after she won a Knight Arts Challenge grant about three years ago. This…
Once again artwork by Banksy is coming to Miami during Art Basel, and it’s problematic. Despite its name, the “Art of Banksy” exhibition, which will open at Magic City Studios December 1, just in time for Miami Art Week, was never authorized by its anonymous anti-capitalist vandal namesake, who reluctantly accepts…
British comedian Rowan Atkinson, the man behind Mr. Bean, is back with another installment of the Johnny English spy spoofs. Johnny English Strikes Again follows the last spy anyone wants on the case as he takes a job to stop a hacker wreaking havoc on London’s infrastructure. Britain’s prime minister…
Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival is back with its annual Gems event of weekend movie premieres at the Tower Theater in Little Havana. This year’s edition will screen several movies likely to become Best Foreign Language Film contenders at next year’s Academy Awards. Here, New Times film critics Juan…
You’d think a 20-year-old indie film from Germany would have lost its mojo by now. But experiencing the quirky Run Lola Run all these years later remains satisfying if not truly thrilling. A mix of sci-fi, slapstick, and romance, the movie was director Tom Tykwer’s third and a breakout hit in 1998.
Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival Gems 2018 has announced its full lineup, and the movies include several Oscar hopefuls from across the globe. Both opening- and closing-night films have been submitted for the Foreign Language category by their respective countries.
The first thing you should understand about The Little Stranger, the new film by Room director Lenny Abrahamson, is that it’s only partly a ghost story. The period film, which follows a country doctor tending to a high-society family in its crumbling mansion, speaks to a shift in the class…
Compared to New York and Los Angeles — and let’s not forget Atlanta — Miami can be a difficult place for an independent filmmaker to get funding for a feature film. Last year, Miami-Dade County commissioners approved a rebate system that called for film or television productions to spend…
When John David Washington stood up and joined a series of elementary school kids declaring “I am Malcolm X” in Spike Lee’s 1992 movie Malcolm X, he never thought he’d actually become an actor. Much less did he expect to appear in a leading role in a future Spike…
This year, Florida’s premier horror film festival, Popcorn Frights, moves its series of chilling works to Savor Cinema in Fort Lauderdale. The festival gave New Times film critics Juan Antonio Barquin and Hans Morgenstern a preview of several of the movies premiering at the festival. Here’s their guide to the films you must see and ones to miss, ranging from science fiction to zombie horror and ghost stories.
Photographer and documentary filmmaker Lauren Greenfield has made a career of chronicling excess, from glamorous youth in Los Angeles who grew up privileged as children of celebrities, to the desperate-to-be-skinny women receiving treatment for anorexia at an inpatient clinic in Coconut Creek, Florida…
Eighty-seven-year-old French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard stands as one of the most respected living figures of French cinema. The legend began his career as a film critic and helped define the French New Wave movement in 1960 with Breathless. Many of his colleagues, including François Truffaut and Éric Rohmer, have passed…
Director John Curran has a varied career as a filmmaker. His previous film, Tracks, followed a woman (Mia Wasikowska) undertaking a solitary journey across the Australian desert. He’s probably best known for 2006’s The Painted Veil, a period drama starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts about a doctor dealing with marital strife…
Last year, around this time, Blake Jenner, the actor most people know for playing the dyslexic golden boy Ryder Lynn on Glee, was to make a homecoming at last year’s Miami Film Festival. Jenner, who grew up in Kendall, was traveling from his home in Los Angeles for the world premiere of his first script turned into a movie…
Happy birthday to Miami Film Festival — it’s finally fully legal. In its 35th year, the fest will show 148 films on movie screens around Miami, as well as host parties, dinners, panel discussions, and other celebrations of cinema in South Florida. Even the most devoted moviegoer couldn’t see and do it all. But if you’re looking for a place to start, check out New Times’ best bets.
In 2013, David Bowie wrote a song on his album The Next Day called “Valentine’s Day.” It was about a school shooting not unlike the one that happened February 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The coincidence is not lost on longtime Bowie keyboardist Mike Garson.
