Love it or hate it, reality television is here to stay; and unfortunately, over the years Miami has been one of the genre’s favorite towns. Yeah, sorry about that, America. MTV gave us the greatness that was the Real World Miami in 1996, but it seems since then anyone and everyone…
The Golden Girls has been off the air since 1992, but this show about four women in their golden years remains fresh as ever. All that sharp, sassy, and sometimes crass as hell comedy keeps delighting audiences through reruns on TVLand, Hallmark, and YouTube. And as fictional residents of Miami,…
Get Hard, Etan Cohen’s comedy about a white stockbroker who hires a black man to prepare him for a ten-year stretch in San Quentin, is like a spoon that’s almost-but-not-yet sharpened into a shiv. With just a little more effort, it could kill. Judging by the poster, in which star…
The Amazing Randi insists that the public wants to be fooled, that it’s easier and more comforting for us not to see unromantic truths. You can see him proclaiming this, a little sadly, in Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom’s doc An Honest Liar, which plays like a companion piece to…
Bet you didn’t think an entire show could be based on a Friends joke. Comedy Central UK’s I Live with Models centers around Tommy, a schlubby barista thrown into the Miami fashion industry when his perfect hands are discovered. His new hand-modeling career comes with a new living situation, sharing…
We’re two films in to the kiddie-dystopia Divergent franchise, and it’s still unclear if the sequel’s director, three screenwriters, eight producers, and especially original novelist Veronica Roth have bothered to double-check a dictionary. Divergent, and now this new sequel Insurgent, tracks the monotone mishaps of Tris (Shailene Woodley), a very…
“The public really doesn’t listen when they’re being told straightforward facts,” says the Amazing Randi. The magician, escape artist, and tiny lion of principled skepticism, now north of 80, leans forward in a black chair, all knees and elbows and Old Testament beard. If it weren’t for that sharpie’s suit…
It’s not every day that one experiences a film that explores both the perils of domesticity and sadomasochism with a genuinely romantic narrative. Yet, that’s exactly what Peter Strickland does with his latest film, The Duke of Burgundy. The film depicts a sadomasochistic partnership between two women: lepidopterist, Cynthia (Sidse…
Céline Sciamma’s pained, thrilling, observational tale of growing up broke and black in slab-like Paris flats is no rebuke to Boyhood, but its besties-dancing-to-Rihanna rhapsody eats the lunch of that bit where Richard Linklater has Ethan Hawke drone on about Wings. They sing, “We’re beautiful like diamonds in the sky!”…
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…
