I’m still trying to decide if Sundance’s decision to kick off its 2017 festival with An Inconvenient Sequel, Al Gore’s follow-up to his influential (and terrifying) climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, is an act of political confrontation or a sign of helplessness. (Or both?) What kind of message does…
Back in 1987, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s film The Running Man depicted a 2017 game show in which convicted criminals fight for their lives, many times to the death, in an attempt to obtain freedom. The “runners” were constantly attempting to evade the “stalkers” in an attempt to keep themselves, and the…
Say this for Sleepless: It gives Michelle Monaghan more to do than almost anything else you’ve seen her in lately, whether it beTrue Detective or Patriots Day, and confirms once again that she should be in the lead far more often than Hollywood would have you believe. The positives don’t…
Last June, after the death of Muhammad Ali, Michael Mann’s Will Smith–starring 2001 film Ali was briefly re-released in theaters. This allowed many of us to see it with fresh eyes. What felt like an ambitious but underwhelming biopic 15 years ago now seems more and more like a masterpiece…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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.
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…
Near the end of Underworld, the 2003 film that launched the popular (and profitable) horror franchise, Viktor (Bill Nighy), king of the vampires, tries to kill the werewolf (a.k.a. Lycan) lover of his protégé, Selene (Kate Beckinsale), and she is not pleased. Grabbing a sword, Selene leaps straight up and…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
New year, new us! JK, new year, same ol’ us: watching TV and hiding in a hole from the bitter January cold and impending doom. The only solution? Watching all the television! You can take the day of the inauguration off to protest, but I expect you back under the…
For 75 years, the U.S. has dominated the production of World War II action comedies. There’s Spielberg’s 1941 (1979), Cary Grant and Tony Curtis in Operation Petticoat (1959), and then exquisite ensembles in The Dirty Dozen (1967), Kelly’s Heroes (1970) and Inglourious Basterds (2009), among many others. We’re such experts…
