Pablo Larraín’s Neruda Fractures the Biopic

“Art is a lie that tells a truth,” Pablo Picasso once said. The aphorism animates Pablo Larraín’s canny and vigorous Neruda, a sidelong biopic of the preeminent Chilean poet and politician, featuring a brilliant Luis Gnecco in the title role, that’s equal parts fact and fiction. (Conversely, Larraín’s film also…

The Biggest Twist: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love M. Night Shyamalan

M. Night Shyamalan appears again to be having a moment. His last film, 2015’s grandparents-gone-wrong horror flick The Visit, proved a small hit with critics and audiences alike, and his latest, this week’s multiple-personality abduction thriller Split, seems poised to do likewise. And why not? Both films are effective chillers…

M. Night Shyamalan’s Latest Is Neither Mess nor Triumph

Despite his reputation, M. Night Shyamalan has never lived and died by the twist. His best films, such as Unbreakable or even last year’s cheerily nasty wicked-grandparents thriller The Visit, work first as accomplished, emotionally engaging suspense. What’s most memorable about them isn’t the final-act revelations or even the quietly…

Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson Shakes the Everyday for All Its Beauty

Walking out of Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson last May at Cannes, I felt like it was the closest the director had come to making an artistic manifesto. Having seen it again, I’m even more convinced. Jarmusch first arrived in New York back in the 1970s with dreams of becoming a poet,…

The Founder Finds America (and Its Food) Turning Nasty

Like its subject, the man who took McDonald’s from a single burger shop to a globe-straddling child-fattener, John Lee Hancock’s The Founder can’t stop selling. The first fast-food kitchen, set up in 1953 by the solemn McDonald brothers in San Bernardino, gets celebrated here as rousingly as John Glenn’s first…

Woman Power Serves a Boy in Mike Mills’ Late-’70s Remembrance

One of the quasi-bohemians in Mike Mills’ gauzy 20th Century Women loves to document ephemera, taking photos of everything she owns. A similar instinct — archiving as art — guides Mills’ movie itself, a trip back in time in which era-specific talismans substitute for genuine thought. Though big feels glut…

Say Hello to The Bye Bye Man, a Not-Bad Twist on Candyman

Maybe it’s a just a sign of the Blumhouse-era horror-movie world we find ourselves in, but there’s something refreshing about a scare flick that (a) actually shows you its monster occasionally and (b) gives you a definite reason to be afraid of it. Hiding things in shadows to enhance audience…

Miami Jewish Film Festival 2017: This Year’s Best Films

The 2017 Miami Jewish Film Festival (MJFF) begins tonight, and from the opening screening in Aventura to the festival closing at O Cinema Miami Shores January 26, there are plenty of worthwhile films to catch. Choosing just a few always requires some tough decision-making, so why not let New Times help? Here are our top picks for what to check out at the festival.

Blake Jenner’s Billy Boy Will Screen at Miami Film Festival 2017

For 34 years, Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival has brought international cinema to the Magic City, but this year, a homegrown talent will step into the spotlight. Blake Jenner, a Miami-born-and-raised actor best known for his role on Fox’s Glee, will compete for this year’s Jordan Ressler Screenwriting Award when the festival presents the world premiere of Billy Boy.

Our Critics’ Picks for Films in 2016

Thanks to a bitter election and seemingly endless culture war, last year was a roller coaster, and the films of 2016 reflect those ups and downs, with surprising results. It’s to be expected that lauded movies such as The Lobster, Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, and Fences would become awards-season…

Claire in Motion Plumbs and Plumbs the Mysteries of Grief

It’s a question the movies ask again and again: How should a person grieve? In Annie J. Howell and Lisa Robinson’s slow-burn pseudo-mystery Claire in Motion, a talented mathematics professor named Claire Hunger (Betsy Brandt) realizes her amateur survivalist husband Paul (Chris Beetem) might not be coming home from his…

Patriots Day Finds Mark Wahlberg Caught Between Fiction and Real Disaster

For better and for worse, Peter Berg has found his genre. After oscillating between sports (Friday Night Lights), superheroes (Hancock) and even board games (Battleship) without much distinction, the writer, director, producer and actor has made a loose trilogy in which Mark Wahlberg reenacts recent tales of American heroism. Lone…

Ben Affleck’s Crime Epic Live by Night Is a Pile of Parts

Somewhere inside the 128-minute Live by Night is a reasonably solid 168-minute movie struggling to get out. No, that’s not a typo: You can sense the contours of an absorbing story as writer/director/star Ben Affleck’s slapdash and fragmented assemblage limps along. Most of the pieces are there, but they remain…

Moonlight Wins Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Drama

The made-in-Miami film Moonlight took home one of the Golden Globes’ biggest awards last night: the statue for Best Motion Picture – Drama, the grand finale of the ceremony. It was a relief to many critics and fans of the film, who’d begun to fear it would be shut out…

The State of Action Filmmaking, 2017

In the ’80s and ’90s, there were action movies. They starred muscly guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone, or martial artists from Jean-Claude Van Damme to Cynthia Rothrock, or actors who were dedicated to the physical demands of the genre, like Bruce Willis or Wesley Snipes. They mostly told…

Molly Haskell Follows Spielberg From Boyhood to Responsibility

Almost all of the history of American movies flows into Steven Spielberg, and the movies that have come since can’t help but be in response. As a storyteller and as a cultural figure, his closest precedent isn’t John Ford or David Lean, but Dickens, another age’s popular titan, beloved more…