For a modern stand-up comedian, the biggest commercial achievement is the stand-up concert film — not just an hour-long special, but a feature-length film released in movie theaters. They are rare, because few stand-ups have the right mix of ability and marketability to compete with spaceships and superheroes. But Gabriel…
iOye, mamasita! Yeah, we’re hollering at you, because you’re a hot Latina lady and we think you should be on our television screens. Miami is known for many things, but as Jack Donaghy eloquently puts it, we’re mostly known for our looks and culture: “Why does anyone go to Miami?…
If the Saw series taught us anything, it’s that every quasi-inventive genre movie is fated to become a yearly franchise with increasingly diminishing returns. The Purge practically cried out for this treatment from its premise alone: James DeMonaco’s film had a big idea — a near-future in which “any and…
A defiantly R-rated farce seemingly commissioned to plug the We’re the Millers-shaped hole in the summer lineup, Sex Tape is warmer and more amusing than its ads would lead one to believe. In fact, it’s almost good enough, leaning a little too hard on the innate likability of stars Cameron…
Sirens blare and an eerie voice announces it’s best to remain indoors if you don’t plan to participate. While others make safety arrangements and some sharpen their knives, one man loads his steel-armored black car with plenty of guns and begins cruising. Fires erupt along the street, and gunshots and…
It turns out the cars and planes of Cars and Planes can kiss. Deep into Planes: Fire & Rescue, a time-killing kid flick whose title is an exact summary of its plot, the filmmakers introduce us to two creaky old Winnebagos, a husband and wife in their sunset years, revisiting…
Wish I Was Here, the movie that actor and second-time director Zach Braff partially funded with money raised through Kickstarter, isn’t nearly terrible enough to satisfy all the grumblers who are hoping to see it fail. When Braff couldn’t secure traditional financing for the film, he appealed to the fan…
Marco Bellocchio is one of the great filmmakers of Italian cinema, and, still working at 74, he may be the greatest of those living. But his movies, when they’re released in the States at all, come and go like zephyrs. Even filmgoers who take all kinds of cinema seriously had…
On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, we hear from L.A. Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson, who’s intrigued by the bizarre universe of Pixar’s Planes movies. We also hear about the film critic’s background and how she became interested in the movies by way of subliminal advertising and photography. [Subscribe…
In an age where video on demand (VOD) services reign supreme, and fewer people are willing to make the trip out to catch interesting films that aren’t widely available, everyone’s turning to getting their content online. Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, HBO GO, iTunes, MUBI — those are just some of the…
Sirens blare and an eerie voice announces that it’s best to remain indoors if you don’t plan to participate. While others make safety arrangements, and some sharpen their knives, one man loads his black, steel-armored car with plenty of guns and begins cruising. Fires erupt along the street, and gunshots…
“I forget that people think that I’m the girl with a ponytail and a briefcase,” says Anna Kendrick, perched on a couch in a T-shirt and jeans. Her career-launching role as a prim go-getter in Up in the Air is so far removed from her actual self that she’s still…
Back when SyFy announced it would produce a sequel to Sharknado, the network’s festival of fish guts and failed acting careers, New Times pointed out the obvious: the writers made a serious mistake setting the action in New York City when it was obviously meant to take place in Miami…
When it comes to representation in film, Miami’s not L.A. It’s not New York City. It’s not even Toronto. Compared to these overused movie locales, Miami has just a handful of productions under its belt: Chef, Pain & Gain, Bad Boys, There’s Something About Mary, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. But…
To call Roger Ebert one of the great populist film critics is to damn him with faint praise. Though he took pride in working for the scrappier of the two Chicago dailies, the Sun-Times, and though we do have him to thank — or curse — for popularizing the thumbs-up/thumbs-down…
Plays adapted into movies always feel naked by the time they make it to the screen, their theatrical bones showing through in a most awkward and unbecoming way. That’s more or less true of Roman Polanski’s screen version of David Ives’ Venus in Fur, in which a playwright and first-time…
Who knows why, but the sight of apes sitting tall and proud on horseback is stirring in a primal way. That’s one of the best images in Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the sequel to the enormously successful 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes…
How has there not already been a Nicolas Cage movie called Rage? That title could fit many of the Drive Angry star’s late-career time-wasters. Here it works best as an imperative rather than an announcement of theme: You may feel some anger if you pay to watch this. Or you…
Who knows why, but the sight of apes sitting tall and proud on horseback is stirring in a primal way. That’s one of the best images in Matt Reeves’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the sequel to the enormously successful 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes…
“It’s the secret films you have to watch out for,” Richard Linklater jokes of his new movie, Boyhood, a furtive experiment that he kept quiet for more than a decade. In 2002, he chose a first-grader named Eller Coltrane, the 6-year-old son of two Texas artists; cast Patricia Arquette and…
When his new film, Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed, practically swept the 2014 Goyas, Spain’s equivalent to the Oscars, writer/director David Trueba was taken aback. What he thought was just another sincere entry in his 20-year career of filmmaking made off with wins for Best Actor (Javier Cámara), Best…
Each year, Florida Supercon attracts all sorts of fanatics, ranging from comic book lovers to lovers of comic book movies; from hidden-in-plain-sight X-Men to Hogwarts students taking a field trip other than to Hogsmeade; and from Dr. Who theorists to Star Wars enthusiasts. You get the idea. It’s a huge…
