Looking for Richard is Al Pacino’s shaggy, nutty, wheedling documentary about a staging of Shakespeare’s Richard III and the art of performance. Filmed between acting stints over a period of several years, it shows us Pacino in a flurry of guises. We see him as Richard, of course, but also…
Thrillers that involve a threat to the nuclear family almost always have a reactionary subtext. Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and Cape Fear leap to mind. When a director of Ron Howard’s depth makes a film like Ransom, about a rich guy trying to best the man…
The made-on-a-shoestring male bonding comedy Swingers has become a darling of the film festival circuit thanks to the cinematic equivalent of good cocktail chatter: smart, funny lines delivered by a handful of stylish, good-looking (but not overpoweringly so) young hipsters whose slick, trendy appearances mask vulnerable hearts. Jon Favreau, the…
thursday october 31 Halloween Extravoodooganza: Lincoln Road (between Sixteenth and Seventeenth streets in Miami Beach) celebrates Halloween by transforming into a haunted cemetery filled with tombstones and sarcophagi, an outdoor “Ghoul Town” art exhibition, and tons of creepy characters. From 3:30 to 5:30, costumed kids can stop at Lincoln Road…
I hate the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. I know, I know — film festivals are good for us, they give us a chance to see movies that we wouldn’t otherwise get to see, they bring area cinephiles together, et cetera. But after screening videos of FLIFF (not to be…
One-person shows. Single-character plays. Monodramas. Autobiographical monologues. By whatever term actors, promoters, or critics dub solo performances, the format — in which one artist attempts to mesmerize an audience throughout an entire evening — has proliferated on the theater scene in recent years. Just check the listings from London to…
Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco are commonly associated with work of heroic proportions. Renowned as leaders of the nationalist Mexican muralist movement in the first half of this century, their names have since been synonymous with revolutionary public art. Together with the sublime Rufino Tamayo, Rivera,…
thursday october 24 Felix Morisseau-Leroy: “Young men, are you beating your drum or just kidding/give me the sticks, I’ll teach you/or help you cultivate your field/and from however far one hears the message/from however far this Vodou is heard/from evening to morning/from however far one has run to come/one knows…
Let me give you a piece of advice regarding the movie Sleepers: As you settle into your seat for the opening credits and the phrase “based on a true story” appears, ignore it. Watch this movie as if it were a work of pure fiction. The best-selling book of the…
When is a soap opera not a soap opera? When it’s written and directed by a filmmaker as skilled as Mike Leigh and performed by actors as convincing as Brenda Blethyn and Timothy Spall in Leigh’s new film Secrets & Lies. Few plot lines have been as overworked in recent…
Tommy Basilio (Steve Buscemi) lost his pregnant girlfriend Theresa (Elizabeth Bracco) to his best friend and former boss Rob (Anthony LaPaglia). To add insult to injury, Rob fired Tommy from the garage where both men worked as mechanics because Tommy “borrowed” $1500 from the till and gambled it away. Tommy,…
Baby boomer sensibility reached an all-time level of overexposure when the drama thirtysomething aired on television from 1987 through 1991. The show followed the angst-ridden escapades of white, educated, mostly overachieving and workaholic friends. Enamored with analyzing their every emotional twinge, this gang perfected an approach to life that blended…
thursday october 17 Kiss of the Spider Woman: Argentine actress Sandra Guida steamed up the stage when she took on the role of Aurora/Spider Woman in the original Buenos Aires production of this Tony Award-winning musical. Tonight at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts (174 E. Flagler St.), Guida…
An earnest, ambitious, and highly principled young lawyer takes on an unpopular case and uncovers evildoing in high places. Question #1: Which movie based on a John Grisham novel does that synopsis describe? Answer: All of them. Question #2: How many of those films suck? Answer: See Answer #1. Say…
You have to admire Shane Black. The guy writes ludicrous, thoroughly implausible scripts that should be laughed out of existence based on their premises alone, fleshes them out with brainless banter and stereotypical characters, and then sells them for more money than many far superior independent films have for their…
Ever since Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical theater version of the classic film Sunset Boulevard debuted in London in 1993, much of the press about the show has concerned numbers: Mounting the remake of Billy Wilder’s sardonic, campy parable of Hollywood decadence and self-delusion cost $13 million; forgotten silent-film queen Norma…
Music by John Coltrane played on a small boom box in a classroom at Miami Beach Senior High as a group of students from several Dade County schools, their art teachers, and some artists from the South Florida Art Center quietly painted pictures of gold trumpets on pages torn from…
thursday october 10 Dream Supreme: Two American icons meet in the realm of the imagination as ART-ACT Productions (10 NE 39th St.) presents the touching comedy-love fantasy Dream Supreme. Saxman Leo Casino portrays jazz legend John Coltrane, who in the play idolizes Marilyn Monroe and purchases at auction the famous…
Tom Hanks’s new movie That Thing You Do! is a slight but catchy little ditty that grows annoying with prolonged exposure. In other words, it’s a lot like the song of the same title that sets the plot in motion and pops up repeatedly throughout the film. Hanks, surely the…
I wasn’t even going to review Leon Ichaso’s cliche-ridden anti-Castro diatribe Bitter Sugar. Ichaso’s Cuban Romeo and Juliet seemed neither good enough to merit my praise nor bad enough to invoke my wrath; the film drifts like a sunstruck balsero in a sea of mediocrity. But then, on September 25,…
David and Martha Flanagan are brother and sister, each burdened by memories of the past, each practiced at covering up pain, living together in their childhood home. Vietnam veteran David, once a high school golden boy, now numbs himself with alcohol, cigarettes, and casual sex in order to forget how…
thursday october 3 Designed for Consumption: Giant doughnuts, ten-foot-long hot dogs, streamlined diners, and bun-topped burger joints: The larger-than-life design of America’s roadside restaurants and food stands will be the subject of a lecture by Dr. Cynthia Elyce Rubin tonight at 6:30 at the Wolfsonian (1001 Washington Ave., Miami Beach)…
