Film, TV & Streaming

I won’t waste your time attempting to sum up the totality of this year’s output, because I can’t, and any critic who claims to have seen enough of the more than 500 scripted series that aired in 2017 to do so is lying

First, these are my favorite movies of the year, not a claim to rank the definitive best, so don’t write to tell me that your favorite should have made it

Art Basel is over, but Miami’s next cultural extravaganza isn’t far off. The Miami Jewish Film Festival (MJFF) will return this January for its 21st year. January 11 through 25, MJFF will screen 62 films from 20 countries and host numerous filmmakers and special guests.

Morris’ film dramatizes Olson’s last days between interviews with Olson’s son Eric and journalists and lawyers who have taken the case as a cause

Just as the story should start to speed up and get more predictably exciting, it becomes weirder, drawn to odd tangents.

As Ginny and her life unravel, Allen’s sympathy for her seems to dry up, and she becomes something like the villain of the piece

The Other Side of Hope is a spiritual sequel to Le Havre, arriving six years later; both are sympathetic pictures of refugees without being overtly weepy or sentimental

Franco portrays Wiseau as a haughty but charismatic weirdo, someone who isn’t well-liked but who definitely gets noticed

And one of the great delights of this film is the way it charts the shifting waves of allegiances that can occur in a family that loves and argues with equal ferocity

December is here, but you won’t get an ounce of snow — you live in Miami, duh. But you can feel a winter chill inside a dark, air-conditioned cinema. When it comes to the classics this month, these theaters will grab your attention.

An article, a book and now a film, Talese’s fascination with Foos’ voyeurism still hasn’t resulted in anything like rigorous journalism

… The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel tracks its title hero’s journey from bright-eyed newlywed to disillusioned standup comedian making her way through the coffee houses and nightclubs of New York City circa 1958, propriety be damned

Steve Madden is exhausted. A whirlwind tour to promote Maddman: The Steve Madden Story — a brilliant and unexpected film that delves into the life of the irrepressible shoe czar — has led him to one of his namesake stores in South Beach. It’s one of more than 100 locations…

Francis Lee’s stark, striking God’s Own Country is one of several significant films this year to depict hard-edged men softening, opening up, finding the courage to admit that everything they need to get through this life isn’t already inside them. The protagonist, raw-eyed farm boy Johnny (Josh O’Connor), has inherited…

Here are some quick U.S. stats: White women won the vote in 1920; some Native American women could vote in 1924, while the rest could not until 1947; Asian-American women first voted in 1952; and black women had to wait until the 1960s to freely exercise this fundamental right. But…

Although it goes beyond a mere stylistic device, the supernatural here often feels like a function of Thelma’s loneliness and inner turmoil

The drama is mostly interior, and Washington’s quiet performance tends to reveal the jittery surface rather than the tortured soul

Any frequenter of Books & Books knows the local chain’s owner, Mitchell Kaplan. The Miami-based bookseller has 35 years of experience expanding his business throughout South Florida while national chains such as Waldenbooks and Borders failed. Few, however, know that Kaplan is one-half of the TV and film production firm the Mazur/Kaplan Company, which has now released its first theatrical movie.

Alpert checks in again and again with the same three families over 45 years of visits to the island, with sometimes heartbreaking results

… In Three Billboards, where livid, grieving mother Mildred (Frances McDormand) taunts the local police for not solving her daughter’s rape and murder (by being burned to death) from nine months prior, McDonagh has taken on a situation that demands we take it seriously.

Nalluri’s emphasis is on amateur theatrical performances, magic-lantern projections and comically competitive authors.

Author Roben Farzad told stories of Miami’s cocaine-fueled past in his recently published Hotel Scarface: Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami. The book centers on Coconut Grove’s Mutiny Hotel, Miami’s epicenter of drug dealing and unbridled debauchery in the ’80s.