Happy hooker? Femme fatale? Damsel in distress? The movies have always been fascinated with prostitutes. Most films generally portray them as resourceful, often wise and amusing, and somewhat scary, using sex in ways that both amaze and titillate (from Blue Angel on through Mighty Aphrodite). The sordid aspects of the…
If the concept of that dubious celebrity Ben Affleck romping in a water park with cinematic darling Gwyneth Paltrow and two adorable moppets does not inspire in you spasms of dizziness and nausea, then you may find plenty to tolerate in this new romantic dramedy Bounce, from writer/director Don Roos…
In 102 Dalmatians, a new brood of puppies is born, one of which, Oddball, doesn’t develop spots. The resulting feelings of inadequacy are such that the poor thing runs away from home and hides in a cave, gets bitten by a bat, and turns into a slavering mad dog. Cruella…
In a converted warehouse not far from the glitter and glitz of Versailles restaurant’s hall of mirrors and the Santería symbols decorating neighborhood botánica windows is a small black-box theater. Ensconced between Southwest Seventh and Eighth streets, the space is dark and intimate. Strains of salsa and merengue from the…
Legend has it that a couple of hundred years ago, a Scotsman traveling through England was condemned to death for carrying what the local authorities considered an instrument of insurrection. They were talking about his bagpipes, of all things. How skittish can the British be, you ask? Consider that bagpipes…
Unbreakable is such a quiet film that whenever a character speaks above a whisper, it sounds like the shattering of glass in a monastery. It’s also a terribly sad movie; almost no one cracks a smile or a joke, and everyone wears the look of someone who’s just spent the…
So many elements make up a boyhood, from joyful laughter and games, to purloined porno mags and pointless aggression, to the scary realization that something vital is slipping away, something that may never be reclaimed. Naturally nostalgic reflections on this magical time form the basis of countless films, with two…
The current release of French director Nicole Garcia’s Place Vendôme, which was nominated for eleven César Awards when it debuted in France two years ago, is yet another sign that the dropoff in French imports that has plagued U.S. screens in recent years is reversing. This is roughly the fifteenth…
“Last year I met the girl of my dreams at the event and we fell in love and we got married and we had three kids and we got a house and we got a dog and a new car and I got the job of a lifetime working on…
So you’ve supped at Versailles, sipped at La Carreta, salsa-ed at Café Nostalgia, shopped at Botanica la Abuela, and seen every episode of ¿Que Pasa, U.S.A.? … twice. But how much do you really know about Little Havana? This weekend South Florida history expert Paul George leads his Little Havana…
Adapted for the stage by TG Cooper, the late founder of the M Ensemble Company, Jackie “Moms” Mabley, Live! is a tribute to the black comedienne who broke the color lines and paved the way for other artists. Born Loretta Mary Aiken in the 1890s, Mabley is often called the…
Le Bouchon du Grove, the little French bistro in Coconut Grove, will add to Miami’s vice Thursday evening. To celebrate this year’s harvest of the Beaujolais Nouveau, the young fruity red wine grown and fermented quickly in Southern France, they’ll host a fete that will spill out of the bottle…
Nilo Cruz’s A Park in Our House is a record of the human spirit when the human body exists in a totalitarian state and survives on a continuum not of belief but of disbelief. The romantic, the idealist, the realist, the repressed, the rebel, and the messiah — these are…
It’s obvious that Miami is a diverse city. But is it fair to say that we live in a pluralistic one? Pluralism entails independent groups developing their cultures and interests within a common community. This means people have to see themselves as part of a bigger picture. Not an easy…
The soon-to-be-talked-about sensations in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream include three or four flashing near-subliminal montages that combine an eye’s iris and dilating pupil, an extreme closeup of heroin cooking in a teaspoon, and a sucking hypodermic needle; a surpassingly frightening sequence in which Ellen Burstyn, in the midst…
At first glance Paragraph 175, a documentary by Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, doesn’t appear to be must-see moviegoing. Epstein and Friedman are well-known award-winning documentarians with a string of notable successes: The Celluloid Closet, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, and The Life and Times of Harvey Milk among…
“There was all sorts of giggling and exclamations and lively conversation,” recalls translator and author Suzanne Jill Levine about her first meeting with Manuel Puig in a Chinese restaurant in New York City’s Greenwich Village during the winter of 1969. The gay Argentine writer had just published his first two…
No one likes to be seen as the roadblock to a revolution. The unfortunate soul–or the dumb bastard–who chooses to impede progress is likely to be mowed down by those charging toward tomorrow. He will become a thing to be wiped off the shoes of those who march, march, march…
November may mean Thanksgiving to most of you, but in the film biz, it means a rush of “serious” films trying to gouge an impression into the short memories of Oscar voters. This shouldn’t be a bad thing, but since the relationship between “Oscar” and “actual interesting filmmaking” is nearly…
Canadian filmmaker Denys Arcand (Jesus of Montreal) isn’t the first guy to skewer what Tennessee Williams called “the bitch-goddess of success.” Or to lay bare the absurdity of Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame. Or to otherwise annihilate celebrity worship. But in his observant, swiftly paced Stardom Arcand does it…
Gopher. Explosives. Gopher … explosives. Gopher! Explosives! There. Now you know exactly what was running through this critic’s mind during The Legend of Bagger Vance, the impeccably aimed new tranquilizer dart from Hollywood’s Mr. Honeydrip, Robert Redford. Of course it’s really not fair to compare this meditative drama to that…
What gets you banned in Boston surely will get you embraced in Miami. Wait a second: These days what gets banned in Boston? Or anywhere else for that matter? A naughty little theater production courtesy of the Canada-based Caravan Stage theater company. This past summer, when they pulled their 90-foot…
