The waifs Walter Keane made famous were known for their huge peepers. But look down at their mouths: Every one kept its lips pressed tight, as though to prevent a secret from escaping. That’s where you see the real artist: Walter’s shy wife Margaret (Amy Adams), who bitterly allowed her…
Don’t ask Billy Magnussen to compare the theatrical production of Into the Woods with the screen adaptation by director Rob Marshall. While in Miami promoting the film — in which he portrays Rapunzel’s prince — Magnussen uses his hands to animate a point and passionately throws them down, palms first…
Photo by Mark PokornyTalk some sense into ’em, Bilbo.Village Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl and LA Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson discuss the third-and-final Hobbit movie: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, in this special bonus episode of the Voice Film Club podcast. As always, send barbs, jabs,…
“If everything were great, nothing would be great.” That line, from Scott Coffey’s smart and sweetly entertaining Adult World, is one of my favorite bits of movie dialogue this year, not least because it’s applicable to every movie genre — actually, every genre of everything. But in the movie world…
Update: Miami Herald film critic, Rene Rodriguez, reports on Twitter that the Swap Shop in Broward County will show The Interview. Despite threats, cyber hacking, and an initial cancellation, Sony has reversed course and decided to release The Interview on Christmas Day. The movie will be shown at fewer than…
Call it Stone Age materialism, but I still think movies are worth owning in physical forms you can hold, shelve, and collect, and therefore worth giving as gifts. Fuck the Cloud — who knows when Hulu will get sold to Google or when Netflix decides to narrow down its catalog…
Village Voice film critic Stephanie Zacharek and LA Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson run down their ten favorite/best/top/whatever movies of 2014, along with Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl. Send barbs, jabs, claims or jokes to filmpod@villagevoice.com and follow us on the Twitter at @voicefilmclub. [Subscribe to the Voice Film Club…
The most distinctive feature of the filmmaking team of Lucas Leyva and Jillian Mayer is the bags under their eyes. It’s one day before the first night of Borscht9, a film and visual arts festival Leyva co-founded with kindred spirits at New World School of the Arts back in 2004…
We begin this week’s Voice Film Club podcast with a strange story about Giles Corey, who famously said, “More weight!” as stones were laid upon him during his witch trial. The end of the year is sort of like that for film critics, who are pressed upon with all the…
Jason Fitzroy Jeffers is no stranger to South Florida. Both musician and journalist, he’s made an impact on this and many local publications. With a recent focus shift turning to filmmaking, Jeffers’ first official production, Papa Machete has been picking up momentum and earning accolades from film circles. “You and…
Sony assumed North Korea would hate the movie. The question was: What would it do? Pyongyang had just tested its atom bomb and threatened “preemptive nuclear attack.” And the Supreme Leader with his finger on the trigger was barely over 30, with less than two years of experience. But Kim…
Editor’s note: Sony has officially canceled the theatrical release of The Interview following terrorist threats against theaters, and the announcement that several major theater chains had opted not to exhibit the film. The following review was written before Sony pulled The Interview — and stands as a reminder that world-shaking…
By Ian S. Port The funniest and most incisive show on television is ending this week — so let’s look back at how it began. On October 17, 2005, a power-suited Stephen Colbert furrowed his eyebrows and showed off highlights of his new set. Red letters above him shouted, “The…
TV continued to unmoor from its origins and transform into something else this year. No longer tethered to a specific appliance, a particular kind of storytelling, or even commercial concerns, “television” now feels like an increasingly obsolete word. But that’s a discussion for another time, for we’ve come to celebrate…
In a nondescript, one-story house not far off NE 79th Street and Biscayne Boulevard on Miami’s Upper Eastside, a collective has set up shop to finish works for the 2014 Borscht Film Festival. The local group of visual artists and filmmakers has spent more than a decade opening eyes to…
“Politics really isn’t my specialty,” Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) shrugs to a naval commander (Charles Dance) in an early job interview scene in Morten Tyldum’s choppy biopic The Imitation Game. Yet no less than Winston Churchill would credit Turing as the main cause of the Allies’ victory over the Nazis…
For reasons that are perhaps understandable, stories about women finding themselves — or their voices or their inner courage or any number of things that are apparently very easy to mislay — are big business. But even if Cheryl Strayed’s hugely successful 2012 memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on…
The du Pont family made its fortune selling gunpowder during the War of 1812, and soldiered on to invent everything ever worn by a cop: Kevlar, nylon, polyester, synthetic rubber. If you’ve cooked on Teflon pans, that money’s theirs, too. That means you’ve supported American patriotism, or at least heir…
The original Broadway Annie was a kiddie musical that wasn’t for kids. It was a period piece about the Great Depression — both a hooray for Warbucksian success and an elbow-jab making clear that rich folk need to share — with a detour into a Hooverville and a key cameo…
TV continued to unmoor from its origins and transform into something else this year. No longer tethered to a specific appliance, a particular kind of storytelling, or even commercial concerns, “television” now feels like an increasingly obsolete word. But that’s a discussion for another time, for we’ve come to celebrate…
As the year in moviegoing draws to a close — and as critics busy themselves drawing up lists and handing out awards — it seems time at last to look ahead. Here are the 10 films to get excited about over the year to come. 1. Jauja (Dir. Lisandro Alonso)…
What kind of circle is time again? A year after blowing the doors off our annual critics’ poll, golden boy Matthew McConaughey won just a single vote for his turn in the loudest movie of the year, Christopher Nolan’s tears-in-space effort Interstellar, which has tied with the unprescient Transcendence as…
