In February of 1995 Charlton Heston called Rush Limbaugh’s radio program to read from Jurassic Park – the book, not the movie. In his best Old Testament boom, Heston declaimed a speech about man’s hubris that Michael Crichton had written for Dr. Ian Malcolm, the chaos theoretician played onscreen by…
Jeff Orlowski grew up wanting to be a nature photographer. But like so many in that field, his work now focuses less on capturing Earth’s natural wonders than it does on cataloguing their steady demise. “This is an entire field of professionals who are witnessing firsthand the falling apart of…
About 10 minutes into Marti Noxon’s eating-disorder drama, To the Bone, Ellen (Lily Collins) sneaks away from her overbearing stepmom, Susan (Carrie Preston), to chug warm water from a public-bathroom faucet (a trick to fool the body into thinking it’s full so that it will burn more calories). A fellow…
It’s 9 p.m. on a Friday, and the Mutiny Hotel in Coconut Grove is but a sleepy ghost of drug-addled days past. Isis Masoud, a tall, pretty, expectant mother with clear brown eyes that almost match her rusty-brown hair, sits on a gold vinyl couch stacked with embroidered pillows in…
Dueling images of Catholic nuns portray either holier-than-thou punishers in habits or hippie types with acoustic guitars, like the postulant Maria in The Sound of Music. Both stereotypes obscure the fact that, in real life, a lot of nuns are just … kind of weird. At one of the many…
Somehow, while we were worrying about superheroes and star destroyers and hot rods and whether Captain America could beat up Superman or whatever, the goddamned Planet of the Apes movies became the most vital and resonant big-budget film series in the contemporary movie firmament. And they did it with the…
Scarface is indisputably one of the greatest movies shot in Miami. It was inspired in part by the city’s cocaine epidemic of the ’70s and ’80s. It included characters who had arrived here via the Mariel Boatlift. And its remake will soon be casting in, of all places, Atlanta.
Days before the Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me premiered, the news hit that John Singleton’s original script for the project opened the rapper’s story with Tupac being raped in prison. Singleton had left the ill-fated film twice before Benny Boom stepped in to helm it, but it was…
Maudie is hit-or-miss, but you’ll probably bawl anyway. Its creators have elected to dramatize nothing but the things that traditional narrative features usually botch. The film, directed by Aisling Walsh, surveys the life of a beloved artist, Nova Scotia’s self-taught folk painter Maud Lewis, who produced scores of cheerily primitive…
The Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues has called The Ornithologist, which follows a lone bird expert in a remote northern part of the country, an “adventure film.” It’s a genre he fantastically destabilizes to encompass martyrdom, transmigration of the soul, and wild revelers cavorting in Mirandese, a nearly extinct language…
When New Times asked Laura Gasperini, Valentina Vincenzini, and Isabella Roberto – the three women behind the Miami Independent Film Festival – what the most rewarding part of running a film festival is, an uncomfortable silence fell over the table. They stared uncertainly at each other for a moment. “We…
The pitch for The Big Sick might sound like a tacky weepie you’d have been afraid to watch on TV in the 1990s. But it’s hard to do justice to the balancing act that the creators of this singular comedy have achieved. Based on events in the life of star…
Most hero stories dating back to Achilles are fantasies of power, of the world made right through violence. What sets Spider-Man apart, outside his joyous bouncing through New York City, is that his stories are also fantasies of responsibility. Rather than just kick bad-guy ass, Spider-Man must forever fight to…
Stepping outside for more than 30 seconds is pretty much the most awful thing anyone can do in Miami this season. So why not sprint from your car to the cinema to stay in the safety of A/C and catch a good film? But instead of watching the parade of mediocre summer blockbusters, catch some classic films. Here’s where to find them.
I hate July. It’s hot and there’s less TV. Nevertheless, she sweated through her bra and wrote this guide to what’s worth watching. Snowfall (FX), July 5. Justified’s Dave Andron teams up with director John Singleton for a drama about the start of the crack-cocaine epidemic in LA. Andron describes…
Who knew Cate Blanchett wanted to be Tracey Ullman? That’s probably not the reaction director Julian Rosefeldt hopes will be stirred by this rigorous series of monologues, stitched together from more than 50 artistic and political manifestos and performed by Blanchett as 13 characters. But, like Ullman, Blanchett takes the…
Hollywood has many more outstanding actors than it does outstanding scripts. That’s the only way to explain Naomi Watts’ career, which launched stateside with a masterful twin performance in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Even with a pair of Oscar nominations, though, the actress has spent years languishing in Nondescript Mom…
In the run-up to this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Bong Joon-ho’s Okja was one of the most mysterious titles in the Official Competition lineup. Then, after people had seen it, Okja turned out to be … one of the most mysterious titles in the Official Competition lineup. Now that it’s…
Popcorn Frights has promised to be “bigger, bolder, and bloodier” in its third year, and the second wave of program announcements reflects that commitment. The festival has already revealed its homegrown horror section and a number of other new features. Now it says more than 40 film premieres from eight countries will hit Miami this August 11 through 17.
Ever since her feature debut, The Virgin Suicides (1999), a dreamy, diaphanous tale about the mysteries of girlhood, Sofia Coppola has ranked among the finest distillers of mood (especially languor) and milieu. Those qualities abound in The Beguiled, her sixth film, an adaptation of Thomas Cullinan’s Civil War–set novel of…
Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver is a remorselessly entertaining, impeccably assembled action-musical in which cars and people defy the laws of physics and common sense. They leap into gunfire and hop over hoods and careen down streets in perfect time to the beats of an unimpeachably cool soundtrack. It’s all absurd,…
In the opening scene of Transformers: The Last Knight, we are presented with the spectacle of King Arthur and his knights locked in an existential battle for the survival of human civilization, even though we’re not really told who they’re fighting or why. No matter, because this after all is…
