With 1994’s Exotica, Atom Egoyan secured his reputation as Canada’s leading director; his new film, The Sweet Hereafter, based on a celebrated novel by Russell Banks, should solidify Egoyan’s hold on that title. Egoyan’s work in general is small-scale enough to seem arty and plain enough to be accessible. The…
If Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown hadn’t arrived weighted with post-Pulp Fiction (1994) expectations, it might be easier to see it for what it is: an overlong, occasionally funky caper movie directed with some feeling. It’s derived from Elmore Leonard’s 1992 best seller Rum Punch, with the location shifted from Palm…
Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry is a film made by a free man — free certainly in a good way, and perhaps also in a not-so-good way. Liberated, for whatever reason, from the need to play a nice guy, Allen can play the bad man he does here free of the…
thursday december 18 Triumph of the Spirit: Carlos Alfonzo’s turbulent, mystical abstractions evoke Afro-Cuban symbols, European icons, violence, sex, the specter of death, and the tropics (his mural in the Santa Clara Metrorail station, The Mystery of the Tropics, typifies his grand scale). One of Miami’s most celebrated and beloved…
If one is in a biblical frame of mind, the sinking of the White Star Line’s Titanic about 400 miles off the southern coast of Newfoundland in 1912 could well be characterized as a divine act of one-upsmanship. The 46,328-ton “ship of dreams” was struck down on its maiden voyage…
Now that the Japanese Tora-san series — with 50-odd entries in 30 years — has presumably drawn to a close after the death last year of star Kiyoshi Atsumi, the James Bond films constitute the longest-running series around. They’ve had their ups and downs, but something about the Bond formula…
At a time when gang-related drive-by killings plague the nation’s major cities, a 40-year-old musical in which two rival packs sit down to a war council at the local soda shop and order “Cokes all around” should seem hopelessly dated. Yet when a police detective shows up spewing racial slurs…
Frida Kahlo’s boyfriend recalled seeing her drenched in blood and coated with gold dust. The boyfriend, Alejandro Gomez Arias, and his eighteen-year-old companion were returning to their homes in suburban Mexico City one September day in 1925 when the city bus on which they were riding collided with a streetcar…
thursday december 11 It’s Only Rock and Roll: Neil Young was right: Rock and roll will never die. Apparently the Lowe Art Museum (1301 Stanford Dr., Coral Gables) believes in the longevity of every parent’s least favorite form of music too, as it presents this traveling exhibition showing the effects…
Wes Craven’s Scream, which opened almost exactly a year ago, was the surprise hit of an overcrowded Christmas season. The success was a triumph partly of counterprogramming: In the midst of a glut of classy Oscar contenders, Scream was the only teen horror film. It was also helped by the…
Steven Spielberg’s Amistad is being given the Big Picture treatment — Schindler’s List big, not Jurassic Park big. Last week’s Newsweek featured the film on its cover, calling it “Spielberg’s controversial new movie,” even though it had not yet been released and the only “controversy” was a legal one about…
thursday december 4 Elba Ramalho: A superstar in her native Brazil, Ramalho has been called the Queen of the Lambada and likened to Tina Turner. She certainly has a mop of hair, manic energy, shapely legs, and a powerful voice. But don’t be fooled: Just because she’s Brazilian doesn’t mean…
What does it take to be an independent filmmaker? A few credit cards to max out, a few friends willing to work cheap, and a little faith in your own talent are about all you need to make a movie in the United States. But in China, to be any…
“Their music is incredibly melodic,” notes Mary Rodgers, referring to the work of famed songwriters Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II during a recent phone conversation from her home in New York City. “Human beings are constructed to enjoy that. We have something instinctive that needs that melodic base. And…
In 1996 Rent picked up the Pulitzer Prize for its rock and roll update of Puccini’s La Boheme, edging out another work that has ties to the classical canon: Jon Marans’s drama Old Wicked Songs. The latter play, about the life lessons a young pianist and his seasoned vocal coach…
thursday november 27 Santa’s Enchanted Forest: Okay, so the seasons don’t really change so much in Miami. Locals spend winter holidays baking themselves on the beach; it did snow once, but don’t count on a white Christmas. How to capture the holiday spirit? You have two options: Go shopping tomorrow…
First, The Heiress was unofficially remade as Washington Square, then Ace in the Hole as Mad City, and The Day of the Jackal as The Jackal. But now we get The Absent-Minded Professor all dressed up in new threads as Flubber. In this frenzy of plundering the past, is nothing…
You can’t exactly call Alien Resurrection a pleasurable experience, but then again, you wouldn’t say that about its predecessors either. Directed by the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who previously co-directed (with Marc Caro) Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, this fourth installment in the Alien onslaught is once again designed…
Miramax held on to the Spanish comedy Mouth to Mouth (a.k.a. Boca a Boca) for better than a year before releasing it early this fall — usually a bad omen. (The film did screen locally as part of this year’s Miami Film Festival.) But although this romp from director-cowriter Manuel…
Over the past three years, 20th Century Fox has built an ambitious new animation studio in Phoenix, putting the promising Don Bluth and Gary Goldman in charge. The two were obvious choices. Since the animators defected from Disney Studios in 1979 to form Don Bluth Productions, they’ve turned out the…
Even if you’re the type destined to arrive late for your own burial, you should make it a point to show up at least fifteen minutes early for Grandma Sylvia’s Funeral, the interactive comedy now at the Broward Stage Door Theater in Coral Springs. That’s the time Grandma Sylvia herself…
John Grisham’s The Rainmaker lulls you into the mindset you get while reading a best seller at the beach. What a sad thing to say about a Francis Ford Coppola movie! Rather than heighten your awareness the way The Conversation or The Godfather did, The Rainmaker makes you feel lazy…
