The most unnerving — and delectable — skill of film noir masters such as John Huston, Billy Wilder, and Jules Dassin may have been the way they turned all of human relations into a slippery fiction, a pack of lies, an extended alibi. In the dangerous netherworld of these movies,…
The Seventies refuse to die. Whatever else you say about that God-forsaken decade, it has proven incredibly resilient. Disco –both the music and the fashions — has made a strong comeback. The Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations have made many Americans nostalgic for those of Ford and Carter. Saturday Night…
A dumb movie is one thing, but a dumb movie about the importance of education — now that’s something special. The only thing dangerous about Dangerous Minds is the glibness with which it treats its subject matter. Even the title is a transparent attempt to sex up what is (or…
Summer in the city of Miami, backs of our necks getting sunburned and sandy. In this season of jet skis and lobster diving, the main branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library offers two exhibitions of nautically themed work, most of it done by local artists. “Boat Images from South Florida…
Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie has evolved into an American classic since its debut on Broadway five decades ago. In addition to stage productions and film and television versions, the play has found its way into high school and college literature anthologies as a progenitor of contemporary American drama, with…
Only three American actresses have proven to Hollywood they can attract large audiences by name recognition alone — Demi Moore, Meg Ryan, and Julia Roberts. Moore is by far the worst of the three, a relentless publicity machine whose presence in wretched box-office triumphs such as Disclosure proves that moviegoers…
Dust rises from the dirt trenches in front of the Thunderbird Resort Motel on Collins Avenue at 184th Street, where a state highway renovation project lately has created an obstacle course for summer tourists. Repairs are in progress at the motel as well. On a recent afternoon, two painters perched…
As everyone knows by now, Waterworld is the most expensive movie ever made. Fierce Pacific thunderstorms, logistical nightmares, a nasty feud between director and star, the star’s insistence that scenes be re-shot because he didn’t like the way his hair looked — such were the problems that ran the tab…
If American adults are still capable of being shocked by the behavior of teenagers, then Larry Clark’s Kids is the movie that will shock them. The New York City teens we meet here for one harrowing 24-hour period talk dirty. They pursue sex and drugs with casual single-mindedness. They lie…
We can measure how far American culture has come since social satirist Lenny Bruce challenged the proprieties of the 1950s and 1960s by noting that New Times can print the word cocksucker and no one’s going to get hauled off to jail on an obscenity rap. Cocksucker. In October 1961,…
With a pitch-perfect performance from precocious eighteen-year-old music video starlet Alicia Silverstone and a sharp, sassy, knowing script from writer-director Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Clueless steps right to the head of the class of high school comedies, surpassing even Heckerling’s own previous foray into that perilous territory…
Who would argue against Luis Bu*uel’s deserving a place in the filmmaking pantheon? Not only have many of his works become roundly considered classics, but the man produced great art for nearly half a century. Bunuel displayed a talent for using vivid imagery to jolt audiences from the first scene…
If a typical Elizabethan theatergoer time-traveled to an evening of contemporary American drama, she would find herself astonished at the passivity of the audience. Modern viewers have been trained to behave. We watch the proceedings on stage politely, applauding with enthusiasm if the production enthralls us, applauding out of obligation…
Man, we’ve seen some scary faces staring out at us from magazine covers in the past two weeks. First Newsweek ran that infamous sketch of the Unabomber. Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the uncanny resemblance to Weird Al Yankovic? Has the FBI explored the correlation between…
A ten-year-old boy named Omri gets an antique cupboard for his birthday. The cupboard looks commonplace but Omri soon discovers it has magical powers. Put a toy figurine inside, close the door, turn the key, and presto! When you unlock the cupboard, a tiny living, breathing, flesh-and-blood creature stands in…
Few of us are strangers these days to the details of child abuse. Television, newspapers, and magazines inundate us with the grim particulars of this problem with increasing frequency. Harder to discern than the facts in such situations are the motivations behind hurting a child. And more important than understanding…
First Knight, a new effort from Ghost director Jerry Zucker, purports to tell the tale of King Arthur’s ill-fated marriage to Lady Guinevere — a young English noblewoman who fell madly in love with the aging king’s most trusted knight, the virile, reckless Lancelot. The film makes hash of the…
Sometimes small movies are just that. Not artsy. Not gritty. Not cutting-edge. Not chancy. Not distinctive. Not great. Not terrible. Just small. The Crude Oasis is small by design. Small in scope, small in budget, small in emotional impact. Writer-director-producer Alex Graves apparently figured he’d avert risk by keeping everything…
We take language for granted. Only when circumstances limit our use of it do we appreciate how it defines us. Think of the effort required to communicate basic needs when traveling in a foreign country. Or how it feels to sit among colleagues or friends who speak rapidly in a…
“Astonishing.” “Haunting.” “Riveting.” “Darkly funny.” “Remarkable.” Those are some of the words critics at other newspapers around the country have been using to describe the extraordinary documentary Crumb, director Terry Zwigoff’s painfully candid portrait of his friend, legendary underground cartoonist and world-class misanthrope Robert (better known as “R.”) Crumb. To…
Last week I fretted that a nice, small film such as A Pure Formality would get lost in the stampede of ticket buyers in the throes of Batfever. I was half-right. Over the weekend of June 23-25, A Pure Formality registered as a mere blip on the winged rodent’s radar…
For skeptics who have been predicting the death of theater since the advent of film and television, the rise of virtual reality and the fall of public funding for the arts seem like nails in theater’s coffin. Certainly, South Florida experienced its share of attrition this past season: Miami Actor’s…
