There ought to be an unspoken rule for young filmmakers shoehorning heavy-handed literary references into their movies: Make sure to have the chops – and the vitality – to back up your homage. A painstakingly preserved antique copy of Don Quixote surfaces repeatedly throughout the pleasantly innocuous sci-fi bauble Robot & Frank, but its presence [...]
Remember the Beijing National Stadium at the 2008 Summer Olympics? You know, that big, bean-shaped steel structure where the 2008 Summer Olympics took place. The Chinese government is very proud of its “Bird’s Nest.” You might wonder about the man credited as the artistic consultant of this massive undertaking. The commies in charge are not [...]
You can tell a lot about married couples, and movies that tell their stories, by their body language at the kitchen table. It’s not the small talk, but what is being left unsaid, that stands out. Hope Springs, the best film to date by Miami’s own David Frankel, is a touching, acutely observed kitchen table [...]
If I limited my review of the new Total Recall to exploring every bump and curve of Colin Farrell’s chiseled physique, this sci-fi remake would crack my 2012 top ten list. The Irish charmer has bulked up to step into Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sizable shoes, and he can’t wait to show off those washboard abs for [...]
What if I told you that a movie about a recovering heroin addict is one of the year’s most life-affirming films? But that’s the unlikely case with Oslo, August 31st, the riveting, present-tense Norwegian drama screening this weekend at the Bill Cosford Cinema and the Miami Beach Cinematheque. The sophomore feature by director/coscreenwriter Joachim Trier, [...]
To say that no good deed goes unpunished in Christopher Nolan’s Gotham City doesn’t begin to convey the filmmaker’s harsh, borderline sadistic treatment of its denizens, particularly the pointy-eared masked vigilante who keeps the streets as crime-free as humanly possible. The last time we saw Batman, he was riding off into the night in his [...]
“You have got to see this,” Dana Keith insisted with his customary enthusiasm. The work of New York filmmaker Shirley Clarke had been unknown to me until a few weeks ago, when the Miami Beach Cinematheque’s founder and director handed me a DVD copy of The Connection. The recently restored 1961 film, one of two [...]
The Amazing Spider-Man, the latest big-screen incarnation of Marvel Comics’ skyscraper-vaulting do-gooder, possesses all the ingredients for top-drawer escapism. So what if the two attractive leads look like they belong in an Ivy League graduate program instead of struggling through high school? And what if that nagging, usually soft-spoken voice inside my head kept yelling, [...]
Matthew McConaughey grabs his crotch in the first scene of Magic Mike. A minute later Channing Tatum’s beefy buttocks take over the screen as his character stumbles his way to the bathroom following a night of rampant decadence. Steven Soderbergh’s disarmingly sweet-natured peek into the world of male stripping wastes no time in whetting the [...]
So wondrous, so lyrical. A dash of Pixar magic, all set to another exquisite music score by Michael Giacchino. You probably think I’m talking about Brave, the latest effort from the Emeryville, Calif.-based animation studios, but I’m actually referring to La Luna, the Oscar-nominated short that precedes it. The tale of three generations of celestial [...]
Depending where you were during the mid-to-late eighties, the hair metal explosion was either a scourge on rock music or a blast of over-the-top decadence. I was in high school, so I couldn’t get enough of bands like Bon Jovi, Poison and Twisted Sister. (“I WANNA ROCK!”) You would think my fanboy credentials would make [...]
What set Ridley Scott’s Alien apart from its scary-sci-fi brethren was a sense of mystery. It envisioned a future where space travel meant a one-way trip to oblivion for some interplanetary miners at the claws of a sleek creature that possessed all the attributes that send a chill down my spine. Birth by bursting through [...]
