In the action thriller The Gunman, Sean Penn, at age 54, looks neither old nor young. He’s been in training to look this age for a long time. Even as a relative kid, in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, his sailor-on-shore-leave mug had a wry, quizzical roughness to it;…
We spent the last week counting down the fifty films shot and set in Miami. And let’s be honest some of them were bad, some were forgettable, and some were just downright offensive. But we’re finally to the good stuff. Here are our top ten Miami movies, from comedy to…
When Rakontur, the eponymous documentarians of all things Miami, began shooting Dawg Fight, a film that follows the lives of Dhafir “Dada 5000” Harris and his eclectic band of backyard fighters in the low income suburb of Perrine, President Barack Obama had just taken the oath of office. Last night,…
One of the American independent movies premiering at the Miami International Film Festival includes Posthumous, a film directed by Lulu Wang, a transplant from Miami to Los Angeles. Wang’s feature film debut stars some high-profile actors from the indie cinema scene, including Brit Marling, Jack Huston, and Lambert Wilson. Wang…
Everybody Leaves offers commentary on post-revolutionary Cuba. The film focuses on nine-year-old Nieve Guerra, a pawn in a war between her alcoholic father and artistic mother. Based on a novel by the same name by Cuban poet and novelist Wendy Guerra, Everybody Leaves (Todos Se Van) is meant to unravel…
Jaume Collet-Serra’s Run All Night, a shoot-’em-up about an out-to-pasture hit man desperate to keep his boss and best friend from whacking his son, is humid with testosterone. It’s the sort of film where a woman accidentally caught by the camera practically apologizes and scurries away from the lens. When…
Henry Stone was probably drinking Cognac with James Brown in the afterlife looking down on the rooftop of the Betsy Hotel for The Record Man’s awesome opening party. The Miami International Film Festival event was a mix of hundred million-record sellers like George McCrae, Grammy winners like Willie Clarke, Bahamian…
As the curtains prepare to close on the 32nd-annual Miami Dade College’s Miami International Film Festival, there are still plenty of films left to see. From foreign dramas to locally made documentaries, the last few days of MIFF offer cinephiles a bevy of diverse and interesting choices. We’ve rounded up…
The Obscure Spring (Las Oscuras Primaveras) is one of the grimmest movies about the consequences of irrational passions that you’ll ever see. Both its subject and its uneven execution will hardly make for a fun night at the movies. The Mexican film, which has its U.S. premiere at Miami Dade…
There’s no empowerment message embedded in Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella, no “Girls can do anything!” cheerleader vibe. That’s why it’s wonderful. This is a straight, no-chaser fairy story, a picture to be downed with pleasure. It worries little about sending the wrong message and instead trusts us to decode its politics,…
Ben Patterson never thought the mini skirt, thong, and diaper wearing cross-dresser he was filming would become President of Haiti, but he did. And actor Marlon Wayans found the story so entertaining he jumped on board as an executive producer. Michel Martelly, aka “Sweet Micky,” was one of Haiti’s most…
The Miami International Film Festival closes Sunday, and you, a typical Miamian, have been too busy fighting traffic to make it to one of the films in the staggering array of international cinema gracing local screens this month. Don’t panic! There’s still time to catch plenty of mind-blowing films. Here…
“Santa Barbara… New York… Columbia… Florida… Yale… Boston.” These places are repeated over and over like a chant paired with the audible footsteps of a man we soon learn is New York poetry professor John Brinnin. Brinnin, played by Elijah Wood, recites the pronouns to himself before entering a room…
Imagine driving down the swanky streets of Miami, along Collins Avenue or passing by Fisher Island, nodding every time you pass a house or apartment where porn was once filmed. If you only knew, your head would never stop nodding. That’s the sort of inside-knowledge Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus…
I nostri ragazzi isn’t the first time that Dutch novelist Herman Koch’s novel, The Dinner, has been adapted for film. Only a year or so after the Dutch adaptation of the book, we find ourselves with this Italian edition. Showing at the Miami International Film Festival under the novel’s title,…
It’s unsurprising that a film like Kenny Riches’ The Strongest Man would premiere at Sundance — the festival for this strange film — but less surprising that it would make its way back home for the Miami International Film Festival, because this is a movie that couldn’t have been made…
It’s not often we witness a film that has a sympathetic protagonist who happens to be a police officer, much less one that actually deserves the audiences’ attention. But the South Korean film A Girl At My Door, is exactly that. Actress Bae Doona stars as the police chief of…
“I love Miami,” says Spanish actress Paz Vega ahead of her visit for the Miami International Film Festival. “I have a lot friends living there. It is a fabulous city! And the best thing is the people. Every time that I go I have so much fun!” She will appear…
From Sundance to Toronto to South by Southwest, Miami filmmakers have made their mark on the festival circuit. The city’s most buzzed-about collective, Borscht Corp., has had work accepted at major gatherings around the world — but never at the Miami International Film Festival (MIFF). Until now. MIFF, which returns…
There are two kinds of humanist movie. One kind shows human beings struggling against the most unspeakable horrors, sorrows, or injustices and still, somehow, emerging with their essential goodness intact. The second, thornier type portrays people doing terrible things to one another — screaming, cheating, and generally making life hell…
The new Brooklyn is generally derided as a wilderness of double-wide strollers, young men with the facial hair of Canadian loggers circa 1852, and artisanal everything. But in Wild Canaries, a modestly scaled murder mystery/comedy from writer/director/star Lawrence Michael Levine, today’s Brooklyn is a place of danger and intrigue. Just…
Almost immediately after it was released, the 2011 stealth hit Best Exotic Marigold Hotel became more a punch line than a movie. Who knew “older” people were so starved for pictures featuring gorgeously shot exotic locales, not to mention people falling in love, falling out of love, or desperately hoping…
