We’re still adjusting to Seth MacFarlane as a big-screen star. Not just because his breakneck absurdist humor often demands viewers pause and rewind, but because the man himself looks like a hand-inked cartoon, with his black, pupil-less eyes and an alabaster baby face that, lacking cheekbones that could carve in…
Boil Maleficent down to one newt’s nose-size piece of advice and you’d get this: Don’t dump Angelina Jolie. It’s not a problem most mortals will face, but as seen through director Robert Stromberg’s lens, the antlered arch-villain of Sleeping Beauty is a sympathetic scorned woman, equal parts Gloria Gaynor, Princess…
Today it’s hard for us to fathom why preachers used to rail so vehemently against jitterbugging. Even with cultural context — black music infiltrating white America; the revolution of rhythm over melody — the athletic whirligig swing-time boogie craze of the ’30s and ’40s now looks as wholesome as the…
In the midst of a summer packed with huge blockbuster features (Godzilla, Edge of Tomorrow, Transformers: Age of Extinction, and even Guardians of the Galaxy), it’s often nice to take a seat and watch something that’s a little less huge in scale. But the summer movie machine often has the…
Harrison Ford has been a good soldier in the Star Wars. He did whatever was asked of him by his commanding officer, George Lucas, even when his commanding officer was wrong. Now that Ford is back in Star Wars, and J.J. Abrams is running the show, Abrams’s first order of…
#492425863 / gettyimages.com Marion Cotillard, the star of the Dardenne Brothers’ competition film Two Days, One Night, showed up for the photo call on Tuesday in a mini-dress encrusted with a riot of buttons, a whimsical and rather adorable choice for an actress who, on-screen just a few minutes earlier,…
After years waiting for approval to serve his devoted cinephiles beer or wine to accompany an art film, Dana Keith, Miami Beach Cinematheque’s director, received some troubling news. He learned the multi-plex down the street can now serve alcohol, but his small boutique theater still cannot. On Wednesday, Miami Beach…
A romance ripped from the pages of Deuteronomy, Frank Coraci’s Blended posits that the best reason for a woman with sons and a man with daughters to get married is that they can take care of each other’s kids. Quel pragmatisme! In the world of this sitcom love story, men…
I haven’t looked forward to a new Godard movie since…never. The first Godard movie I saw upon its release in a movie theater was First Name: Carmen, in 1983, which overwhelmed me: I didn’t yet understand that it’s OK not to completely comprehend everything a filmmaker puts in front of…
EVer since Episode VI back in 1983, fans have been waiting anxiously for the next installment, and now we know that we’re just a little over a year away from Episode VII. With the most recent announcement of the newest cast members and now as filming has begun, the engines…
In a world where booze is legal at the movies, one theater could change audiences’ film-watching experience forever. That’s right, film buffs. Soon, South Beach moviegoers might not need a flask to get drunk at the theater. Miami Beach commissioners approved a measure Wednesday to allow some movie theaters to…
It’s been a few days since I saw David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars, screening here in competition, and I’m still not completely sure what I think of this sometimes-smart, sometimes-arch ultra-black comedy about shallow Hollywood types. But one thing’s for sure: Julianne Moore is a knockout in it. Moore…
America’s sweetheart Jennifer Lawrence truly can do anything. In the course of three months, she’s graciously lost an Oscar (her third nomination in four years), swanned above the mansplaining condescension of a male pundit who tsk-tsked her for getting drunk in public, and burst into the summer blockbuster X-Men: Days…
When he moved to Miami from Austin in May last year, Josh Frank wanted to simply re-create the Blue Starlite, the urban drive-in theater he launched in Texas. Four months later, the Blue Starlite Mini Urban Drive-In opened its gate in a small Wynwood lot next to O Cinema. The…
It was Jason Tugman’s first day of work. Almost a decade later, he still remembers the screams. A former circus fire-eater, he’d taken a job as a lighting technician for The Oprah Winfrey Show after burning off a chunk of his tongue. The pay was $32 an hour and he…
It’s been a few days since I saw David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars, screening here in competition, and I’m still not completely sure what I think of this sometimes-smart, sometimes-arch ultra-black comedy about shallow Hollywood types. But one thing’s for sure: Julianne Moore is a knockout in it. Moore…
#492425863 / gettyimages.com Marion Cotillard, the star of the Dardenne Brothers’ competition film Two Days, One Night, showed up for the photo call on Tuesday in a mini-dress encrusted with a riot of buttons, a whimsical and rather adorable choice for an actress who, on-screen just a few minutes earlier,…
Since 2002, the year Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man hit theaters, the other Spider-Man, the hero of the actual comic books, has joined the Avengers, revealed his secret identity to the world, and become a highly paid inventor who has engineered, among other marvels, a limitless energy source science has dubbed “Parker…
In 2014, any filmmaker who has a feel, and a flair, for romantic melodrama is doomed, and just one recent example from the world of blockbusters suggests why: In the final moments of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the hero tragically fails to save a major character, but the moment, coming…
On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, the Village Voice’s Alan Schestuhl and L.A. Weekly’s Amy Nicholson are joined by special guest Chris Klimek to discuss the strange career of Tom Cruise, the new X-Men movie, and why Han Solo should die. We close the show with a special phone…
If all of Cannes isn’t it love with Channing Tatum right now, it should be. During the photo-call for Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher on Monday afternoon Tatum — relaxed, affable, light on his feet despite being seriously built — turned toward the press and took a few photographs of the corps…
Friday, Deadline reported that Showtime is developing an hourlong drama about athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs and a South Florida doctor who provides them. The site also reported that New Times managing editor Tim Elfrink will consult on the series, along with former New Times reporter Gus Garcia-Roberts, who now…
