We can measure how far American culture has come since social satirist Lenny Bruce challenged the proprieties of the 1950s and 1960s by noting that New Times can print the word cocksucker and no one’s going to get hauled off to jail on an obscenity rap. Cocksucker. In October 1961,…
With a pitch-perfect performance from precocious eighteen-year-old music video starlet Alicia Silverstone and a sharp, sassy, knowing script from writer-director Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Clueless steps right to the head of the class of high school comedies, surpassing even Heckerling’s own previous foray into that perilous territory…
Who would argue against Luis Bu*uel’s deserving a place in the filmmaking pantheon? Not only have many of his works become roundly considered classics, but the man produced great art for nearly half a century. Bunuel displayed a talent for using vivid imagery to jolt audiences from the first scene…
If a typical Elizabethan theatergoer time-traveled to an evening of contemporary American drama, she would find herself astonished at the passivity of the audience. Modern viewers have been trained to behave. We watch the proceedings on stage politely, applauding with enthusiasm if the production enthralls us, applauding out of obligation…
Man, we’ve seen some scary faces staring out at us from magazine covers in the past two weeks. First Newsweek ran that infamous sketch of the Unabomber. Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the uncanny resemblance to Weird Al Yankovic? Has the FBI explored the correlation between…
A ten-year-old boy named Omri gets an antique cupboard for his birthday. The cupboard looks commonplace but Omri soon discovers it has magical powers. Put a toy figurine inside, close the door, turn the key, and presto! When you unlock the cupboard, a tiny living, breathing, flesh-and-blood creature stands in…
Few of us are strangers these days to the details of child abuse. Television, newspapers, and magazines inundate us with the grim particulars of this problem with increasing frequency. Harder to discern than the facts in such situations are the motivations behind hurting a child. And more important than understanding…
First Knight, a new effort from Ghost director Jerry Zucker, purports to tell the tale of King Arthur’s ill-fated marriage to Lady Guinevere — a young English noblewoman who fell madly in love with the aging king’s most trusted knight, the virile, reckless Lancelot. The film makes hash of the…
Sometimes small movies are just that. Not artsy. Not gritty. Not cutting-edge. Not chancy. Not distinctive. Not great. Not terrible. Just small. The Crude Oasis is small by design. Small in scope, small in budget, small in emotional impact. Writer-director-producer Alex Graves apparently figured he’d avert risk by keeping everything…
We take language for granted. Only when circumstances limit our use of it do we appreciate how it defines us. Think of the effort required to communicate basic needs when traveling in a foreign country. Or how it feels to sit among colleagues or friends who speak rapidly in a…
“Astonishing.” “Haunting.” “Riveting.” “Darkly funny.” “Remarkable.” Those are some of the words critics at other newspapers around the country have been using to describe the extraordinary documentary Crumb, director Terry Zwigoff’s painfully candid portrait of his friend, legendary underground cartoonist and world-class misanthrope Robert (better known as “R.”) Crumb. To…
Last week I fretted that a nice, small film such as A Pure Formality would get lost in the stampede of ticket buyers in the throes of Batfever. I was half-right. Over the weekend of June 23-25, A Pure Formality registered as a mere blip on the winged rodent’s radar…
For skeptics who have been predicting the death of theater since the advent of film and television, the rise of virtual reality and the fall of public funding for the arts seem like nails in theater’s coffin. Certainly, South Florida experienced its share of attrition this past season: Miami Actor’s…
The term “Haitian art” inevitably evokes several enduring cliches, manifested in images of quaint island landscapes painted by self-taught artists, “primitive” personifications of Vodou gods, and “derivative” works executed in expressionist or figurative styles. As with art from Africa, art from Haiti traditionally has defied Eurocentric notions of originality and…
Amazing, really, the similarities between the brooding superhero of Batman Forever and the Priscilla-meets-Woodstock inhabitants of the documentary Wigstock: The Movie. Start with the obvious parallel: Batman patrols the mean streets of Gotham City in a tight batsuit that exaggerates his padded muscles; Wigstock’s drag queens strut their stuff in…
Well, Batman did it again. Swooped down just in time to save the day. An aura of resignation had started to permeate the superhero’s stomping grounds. (Gotham City? Get real. We’re talkin’ Hollywood, babe.) Just as surely as he dispatched nefarious supervillains Two-Face and the Riddler, the Caped Crusader laid…
Like the veteran gambler who frequents the racetrack or the casino in the hope of this time hitting it big, seasoned theatergoers return to the theater faithfully anticipating a win. And every once in a while, among the duds, the disappointments, and the well-intended productions — even among the energetic,…
What summer movie season would be complete without at least one film based on a Michael Crichton novel? Welcome to Congo, a shamelessly derivative jungle adventure that attempts to cross Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark with King Kong but ultimately feels more like a bad Tarzan movie…
The South Beach Film Festival presents a juried showcase for small independent films (made-in-the-U.S.A. offerings predominate) that would not otherwise see the light of a projector in South Florida. Last year’s inaugural SoBe Fest included two outstanding features — Spare Me and The Making of “…And God Spoke” — and…
An hour north of Boston, in the northeast corner of Massachusetts, lies a mass of land jutting into the sea — Cape Ann. Lesser-known and considerably smaller than Cape Cod to the south, Cape Ann is home to the small city of Gloucester, the town of Rockport, and the village…
Next month the main branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library celebrates its tenth anniversary at its current location in architect Philip Johnson’s fortresslike cultural complex on West Flagler Street. When the library building opened in July 1985, artist Edward Ruscha’s site-specific paintings already had been installed; ringing the interior of…
A handsome man in a snappy gray suit lies crumpled A unconscious? dead? A on a cobblestone street. A mysterious woman in black carrying a bright red purse to match her flaming crimson lipstick rounds the corner and cautiously approaches the body. She jostles the man with her foot. He…
