Back in the Sixties and Seventies, when its animation unit was in the doldrums, the Disney studio made a number of genuinely funny live-action “family” comedies (1976’s No Deposit, No Return and 1977’s Freaky Friday, among them) that were, within their limited ambitions, genuinely funny. The studio’s most recent film,…
The science-fiction writing of the late great Philip K. Dick hasn’t been particularly well-served on-screen. The most recent adaptation of one of his works, Screamers, was junk; Total Recall (1990) had its moments but was less ingenious by half than the short story on which it was based. Blade Runner…
Nothing brings theater to life like a little death. Let a doctor say someone has only a few months to live and you’ve got drama. In recent years some of the best productions have posted alarming mortality rates. Gay characters in particular have struggled through the final stages of AIDS…
thursday february 19 AfterDark Concert Series: Are you beside yourself with the thought that very soon Seinfeld will no longer keep you glued to the tube on Thursday night? Here’s an alternative: In an attempt to lure you to downtown midweek, the people at Bayfront Park (301 Biscayne Blvd.) created…
When Quentin Tarantino started up his boutique releasing company Rolling Thunder in 1996, his first release was, unsurprisingly, a Hong Kong production. After all, Tarantino has been one of the most vocal boosters of Hong Kong cinema in the United States. What was surprising was that he chose to release…
This period tale of two gamblers — Oscar, a failed minister, and Lucinda, a glassworks owner — is too wispy to be an objet d’art and too clumsy to be a toy. Its key symbol is a tiny glass teardrop known as the “Prince Rupert drop,” which can withstand a…
Having to wait for one month out of the year to buy candy hearts with cute sayings printed on them is no big deal. After all, those hard little wafers have lost much of their appeal now that they’re more likely to break my aging molars than to attract a…
thursday february 12 David Copperfield: As tempted as we are to tear into David Copperfield, he denies us the pleasure by continuing to do it himself, over and over again. The oh-so-serious illusionist is now slicing himself in half with a laser beam. Don’t, however, expect to see gallons of…
His eye trained on the manic collision of Catholicism and consumerism, Spanish director Pedro Almodovar has made some of the most lively, genre-bending films of the past two decades. The guru of a visual style that emphasizes bright primary colors and bold geometry, he’s in love with the glittering surfaces…
In these paradox-ridden times, producers in search of cutting-edge fantasies look back — they visit their boyhood or girlhood rooms and ransack their old books and videos, or peruse their studio’s property list for works that scored well in other media. In the mid-Nineties, the English company Working Title Films…
In an example of last-minute housecleaning before the February ratings sweeps began, ABC network executives pulled the plug on the cop drama Cracker. While I liked the few episodes I saw about the raffish psychologist who solves homicides, I’m glad it’s gone. One of the series’s writers, Steven Dietz, doesn’t…
Touted as a comedy-thriller, Corpse! is more accurately a thriller-comedy in which the suspenseful plotting of the first act gives way to farce in the second. Picture a film adaptation of an Agatha Christie mystery starring Benny Hill and you’ll have some idea of the myriad plot twists and loony…
thursday february 5 Miami Festival of Discovery: An international passel of hot young pianists will dazzle you with their digits for three days at what sounds like an event dedicated to Christopher Columbus but is actually an exploration of musical virtuosity. Today and tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. Edna Golandsky, of…
The fifteenth Miami Film Festival continues apace Thursday through Sunday with two works by Japanese director-actor Takeshi Kitano, a star-studded entry from venerable new-wave filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, and the most recent movie made by playwright David Mamet. Not forgetting a closing-night screening of Italy’s Il Ciclone, which has become that…
thursday january 29 Public Works Film Series: See for yourself how bad times really were during the Depression by checking out the adjuncts to the exhibition “Public Works” at the Wolfsonian-FIU (1001 Washington Ave., Miami Beach). In addition to a series of lectures and performances commencing next week, the museum…
You will give yourself a migraine if you attempt to divine a theme running through the 26 films that make up the fifteenth Miami Film Festival. Don’t bother trying. A readily apparent theme does not exist — not that one needs to. International in everything but name, this year’s renewal…
The Othello Project, on-stage at the Florida Shakespeare Theatre in Coral Gables, takes its Deep South setting and part of its title from the Mississippi Project, in which more than 800 college students went down to promote black voter registration in the summer of 1964. Less than two weeks into…
thursday january 22 Miami Modernism: Have you developed a passion for collecting items from the Twentieth Century and want to expand your hunting grounds beyond garage sales and thrift stores? Miami Modernism is the ticket. For the next four days at the Ramada Resort Deauville (6701 Collins Ave., Miami Beach),…
After Santa’s overstuffed sack of Oscar qualifiers is disgorged every December, Hollywood dumps its lost-cause features during the first few weeks of the new year. In recent times these have included the airplane “thriller” Turbulence (1997), Bio-Dome and Two If by Sea (1996), and Cabin Boy (1994). This year we’ve…
One of the conceits to which every critic must be genetically predisposed is the idea that, at the end of the day, his or her opinion actually matters. That some unknown phantasm at a nonspecific coffee shop sits immersed in said critic’s latest ill-advised screed, imbibing every word as if…
Martin Scorsese’s Kundun is a deeply ceremonial experience; it’s like watching a serene pageant of colors, rituals, and costumes. It tracks the life of the Dalai Lama — recognized as the fourteenth reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion and the spiritual and political leader of Tibet — from his childhood…
James Joyce’s work is an acquired taste. Whereas the Irishman’s short-story collection Dubliners (1914) is an easy read, his later novels have been banned from my beach bag because of his experiments in style. Not willing to thread my way through the stream-of-consciousness narrative of Portrait of the Artist as…
