“Cuba’s been sitting here for what, 55 years. Half an hour away, basically giving the biggest superpower in the world the stiff middle finger.” In the season six premiere of Anthony Bourdain’s award-winning travel show, Parts Unknown, the food-loving host travels 90 miles south of Miami to savor some of…
Read any good books lately? For lit nerds and wordsmiths, October begins the real countdown to Miami Book Fair International (MBFI), which runs from November 15 through 22. For one week, the Magic City get its Woodstock, its Comic-Con, its World Series, its U.S. Open. Big names like Isabel Allende,…
Thursday, October 1 With Miami’s lack of beloved autumn traits, like crisp air and fall foliage, the least a local could do is go whole hog on Halloween movies to make up for it. Kicking off just in time to get the horror season started, the inaugural Popcorn Frights Film…
1. “He meant well,” a ticket-buyer said, shuffling miserably out of a Thursday-night screening of Roland Emmerich’s calamitous Stonewall. “That’s got to count for something.” I don’t think that’s true. If those good intentions had counted, they might have inspired Emmerich not to trust himself to helm this fictionalized recounting…
To witness Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba) is to witness another era entirely, a realm that, for better or worse, no longer exists. Long, dreamlike shots that trail through locations both gorgeous and destitute, offering up four short stories that were meant to depict Cuban life during the early years…
Emily and Amir, the couple at the center of Ayad Akhtar’s combustible tragicomedy Disgraced, live well. They reside in an enviable apartment on New York’s Upper East Side, with, per the script, “high ceilings, parquet floors, crown molding — the works.” There’s a marble fireplace, a terrace, lustrous light slanting…
Local heroes are hard to come by in Miami. Whether born in South Florida or early transplants, those that make it big usually permanently migrate up north, leaving the city that raised them behind. But not internationally acclaimed artist Daniel Arsham. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Arsham moved to Miami at…
The good news about the Richard Gere drama about the bad news of New York’s enduring homeless crisis? Time Out of Mind, written and directed by Oren Moverman, is stubbornly, respectfully unflashy, Manhattan neorealism steeped more in reportage than in the clichés of prestige films. A prideful man slow to…
Desperation, anxiety, stubbornly saying yes to survival: If grand struggles are your thing, there are plenty in Ridley Scott’s The Martian, based on Andy Weir’s popular novel, which was first self-published in 2011 and then picked up by Crown in 2014 — itself a rare seedling that took root against…
In the mid-20th Century, movie audiences understood the value of a good melodrama: A picture like Now, Voyager or Black Narcissus or almost anything by Douglas Sirk could be an urn into which you could pour your own unarticulated feelings of loss and loneliness. The heightened, unrealistic intensity of those…
Those of us who have been waiting forever for Joseph Gordon-Levitt to make a musical now have the next best thing: In Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk, this breezy Puck of an actor plays high-wire artist Philippe Petit, who walked the space between the World Trade Center’s twin towers in 1974…
Producer Armando Christian Perez. It rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? Nah — we’ll stick to Pitbull. Fox has bought the rights to a Miami-based drama series titled 305 and decided that’s there’s nobody better to help produce the project than Mr. 305 himself. Fox has chosen Sascha Penn…
Kiss September goodbye and say “hello” to all things October. From horror movies galore to bird festivals, Miami’s got one stellar event after another this month, which happens to be Miami Attractions Month. While the discounted activities and entry fees are nothing to sneeze at, nothing beats fun for free. We’ve…
The hardest type of guy for an actor to play is one without charisma. That’s the challenge faced by Tobey Maguire in Edward Zwick’s Pawn Sacrifice, which tells the story of Cold War-era chess champ and totally strange human being Bobby Fischer. He’s good at it — maybe too good…
Since 2006, Lip Service has been a way for members of the Miami community to tell and hear live stories. Started by Andrea Askowitz and Esther Martinez, it also has its local roots in one of Miami’s most beloved spots. “When I came to Miami (from Los Angeles) I was…
Jumping right into conversation with Anna Muylaert, whose latest film Que Horas Ela Volta (The Second Mother) is making waves worldwide and was just picked as Brazil’s Foreign Oscar submission, was as easy as pie. With her film playing the Brazilian Film Festival of Miami earlier this month and opening…
The best time of the week is finally here — the weekend. Miami offers just about every activity this weekend. Get a taste of Oktoberfest at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden on Friday or celebrate American Indian Day at Miccosukee Resort & Gaming on Saturday. On the music front, you…
Daily, Michelle Grant-Murray regularly steps into the varied roles of mother-wife-daughter-teacher-dancer-choreographer, so it is no surprise that her latest solo work, Kahina, A Tangled Root, is an exploration of the female body in all of its complex manifestations. “I started working on it as an investigation of my own body…
For anyone who identifies as female, the world is a different place than it used to be. Inequities still exist, but advocates everywhere are rejecting old school standards, and the world is changing as we speak. From body positivity to gender neutrality to equal pay for equal work, new wave…
South Beach was a much different place than it is today. If you’re brave enough to trek it out across the MacArthur for a day trip, you’re likely to be greeted by an atmosphere that’s a cross between the Vegas Strip, Disney’s Epcot Center, and the Jersey Shore. It’s a…
The most recently eligible batch of 2014 ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries included Miami-based studio Rakontur’s Billy Corben directed The U Part 2, won the Emmy for Most Outstanding Sports Documentary Series this past week. Corben’s “The U Part 2” picked up where his original 2009 film about the University of…
Federico Fellini may be Italy’s most famous and important movie director of the 20th century. His films pleased a range of audiences on an array of levels. His movies had farce, slapstick, meta-narrative, satire, drama and tragedy — often within a single scene. Take the opening scene of La Dolce…
