Classic Films Showing in Miami in January

Welcome to 2016, everybody! And with the beginning of any New Year comes two things: a bunch of awards movies flooding theaters, and just as many awful early-year releases polluting the multiplexes. Instead, why not go the safe (and likely, a whole lot more entertaining) route? You know it: classic…

Natalie Dormer Steps Out of The Forest and Emerges a Leading Lady

Natalie Dormer sits near the window in a hotel room at the Mandarin Oriental, with Miami’s skyline and clear-blue bay her natural backdrop. She wears a red-and-white floral-print blazer that aesthetically complements the topic at hand: her latest film, The Forest. The 33-year-old actress is in town to promote the…

My Friend Victoria Is an Empathic Study of Race and Class

A passive protagonist. Very little conflict. The need for heavy narration to carry meaning. On the checklist of reasons not to adapt a literary source to the screen, Doris Lessing’s short story “Victoria and the Staveneys” ticks nearly every box short of “Is about people who get off on car…

Kent Jones’ Hitchcock/Truffaut Is Best When It’s Practical

They could have called it Hitchcock/Truffaut/Scorsese/Fincher. Less an adaptation of one of the great books about film than a feature-length recommendation, Kent Jones’ documentary take on François Truffaut’s exhaustive career-survey 1966 interview with Alfred Hitchcock — Hitchcock/Truffaut — is an arresting précis, sharply edited and generous with its film clips…

Miami Local to Showcase His Unique Skills on New Fox Special, Superhuman

A Miami man with his very own Heroes-like talent is set to appear on Fox’s Superhuman special. Cuban-born Miami resident Yusnier Viera will appear on the new two-hour special hosted by actor Kal Penn, and featuring guest-judges Mike Tyson, actress/comedian Mary Lynn Rajskub, and neurosurgeon Dr. Rahul Jandial. Twelve ordinary contestants will display…

Kill List: 2015’s Best Horror Movies

One of our most enduring cinematic genres, horror is also among the most difficult to do right. This may sound obvious — countless attempts are made to scare moviegoers every year, whether in theaters or, increasingly, streaming online — but it’s brought into focus by the few that actually make…

The Ten Best Queer Films of 2015

With the year coming to an end and the bulk of “Best of” lists featuring a mountain of the same kind of film we witness every year, it’s time to offer up something a little different. So instead of bombarding you with another list of movies about straight guys and…

Cold and Dreamy, Carol Examines Women in Love

Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin’s sweet nectarine of a jazz standard “Easy Living” figures, in a glancing yet potent way, in Todd Haynes’ Carol, adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt. Even though the lyrics speak of contentment — “Living for you is easy living/It’s easy to…

Concussion Takes On the NFL but Offers Little Drama

Concussion isn’t much of a movie, but it’s a fascinating bellwether for where the National Football League stands on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain disease associated with many of its former players. It so happens that the human brain isn’t supposed to whip against the skull like a…

The Big Short Takes On the 2008 Financial Crash — and Crashes

Fueled by impotent, blustery outrage, Adam McKay’s The Big Short, about the grotesque banking and investing practices that led to the 2008 financial collapse, is about as fun and enlightening as a cranked-up portfolio manager’s rue-filled comedown after an energy-shot bender. Based on Michael Lewis’s 2010 bestselling book of the…

Tarantino’s Bloody The Hateful Eight Refuses to Play Nice

Here’s to Quentin Tarantino’s cussed perversity. The Hateful Eight — his intimate, suspenseful western splatter-horror comedy — has been shot at great expense in the long-gone 70 mm format, but the movie itself is set almost entirely in cramped interiors. He’s hired Ennio Morricone to score the thing, but don’t…

You Already Know Everything That Happens in Daddy’s Home

Here’s a challenge. Gather some friends, pour some drinks and announce to everyone the premise of Daddy’s Home, the new family comedy about dads competing to be pater superior. It won’t take long: Will Ferrell is a doting schlemiel of a stepdad to suburban moppets whose biological father, played by…

Jennifer Lawrence Hustles, but Joy Does Her No Favors

In most of his eight films and especially since The Fighter (2010), choreographer of chaos and screwball scion David O. Russell has assembled boisterous, buoyant casts. His manic ensemble players, like those in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, carom off one another, their high-pitched energy keeping the movies bustling…