Not very long ago in a city very close to our hearts, a Guatemalan-born actor was cast in the upcoming seventh episode of Star Wars. We don’t yet know what role is in store for Oscar Isaac, previously known for supporting characters in Drive and the 2010 remake of Robin…
Last year was a landmark year for LGBT rights. Aside from many states legalizing same-sex marriage, the United States Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as a union between a man and woman, for the purposes of federal matters, such…
Criticism doesn’t get nearly enough credit these days. Most people just bash critics in disagreement. With Roger Ebert’s At the Movies and the like all missing, it’s up to most critics to make their own spotlight, but here in Miami, they’ve got a great helping hand. Over at the Miami…
Still mad you didn’t meet James Franco last year when he promoted the Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival’s screening of his film Interior. Leather Bar.? Don’t fret. Franco’s impish grin and squinty gaze may be gone, but he’s not the only creative genius making LGBT films. The world-renowned festival…
Films like BFFs disprove the myth that a majority of film festival offerings are nothing more than pretentious, self-indulgent arts projects. BFFs is a funny, cute film with well-developed characters who endear themselves to the audience. “The film is firmly in the ‘dramedy’ realm,” says the film’s director Andrew Putschoegl…
Art, food, and mingling are a few of Miami’s favorite things. It’s no wonder there’s a constant flow of gallery events ready to feed hungry mouths and egos, one artist showing at a time. But something’s missing, and that something is consideration of what artwork can do outside of white…
Wednesday just might not be the best night to go watch a movie. Last night, moviegoers at the Regal South Beach Stadium 18 were interrupted with the blaring of the fire alarm. At around 7:30 p.m., the alarm sounded, causing guests to think it was just some sort of routine…
Who ever said, “Nice guys finish last” is an asshole. Just ask couture designer and season one winner of Lifetime’s Under the Gunn, Ozcar Garcia Lopez. The Coral Gables native, who admittedly says that he can’t stand dramatic confrontations, gained praises from mega-star judges, Heidi Klum, and Neil Patrick Harris,…
Watching Kristen Wiig on Saturday Night Live, you maybe sometimes wondered if she was from outer space, perhaps some planet where women have big foreheads and tiny hands and sing like chickens on helium. As sheltered housekeeper Johanna in Liza Johnson’s proudly frustrating Hateship Loveship — a pun on the…
The most perfect works of art are those suspended between conception and realization, the ones that seize you up with how great they’re gonna be. (Well, those and Busby Berkeley numbers.) Alejandro Jodorowsky’s daft, daring, surrealist, possibly impossible adaptation of Dune, Frank Herbert’s spice-mining science-fiction novel that later proved unadaptable…
Has it ever occurred to contemporary commercial filmmakers that maybe audiences could take a movie’s word for it that a character has been tortured? That perhaps implication and skilled acting could communicate the idea with sufficient power so that we might all be spared the screaming and limb-breaking and slow-motion…
Ah, the Romanians — sometimes it seems like no one else is bothering to make movies for grown-ups anymore. Those of us with an abiding New Wave-y interest in human warts and tragic truth-telling have known, since 2005’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, to look to the Carpathians for dependable…
The Sonora Desert in Arizona is freezing at night, brutally hot in the day. The documentary Who Is Dayani Cristal? reveals that the infrastructure dealing with illegal immigration into the United States from points south is likewise hot, cold, and unnecessarily deadly. We meet Americans dedicated to identifying, even humanizing,…
The sexual politics of Nick Cassavetes’ decidedly un-romantic comedy The Other Woman are intriguingly European and, at their core, kind of groovy. Wronged Connecticut wifey-wife Kate (Leslie Mann) seeks out her husband’s mistress, sexy city-slicker and high-powered lawyer Carly (Cameron Diaz), looking to her for answers: Why is my husband…
The genre of dystopian fiction and film has been around forever, and it sure isn’t stopping. Recent years have shown an abundance, and they’ve come in all kinds of forms; from adaptations of young adult literature (Hunger Games, Divergent) to visually stunning original works (Oblivion). While we can’t forget a…
Daniel Armando is a director and art director best known for Boys Like You (2011). His MGLFF debut, What it Was, tells the story of Adina, a successful Latina actress who returns to New York after devastating life events, only to find herself lost in a dreamscape. The highly-stylized film…
Club King, directed by Jon Bush, is one of three world premieres at this year’s Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (MGLFF), and it is sure to get a global party started. Bush’s film grants viewers a behind-the-scenes peek into the life of Mario Diaz, the club king known for…
It’s rare that a first-time feature director can make as competent a film as Brooklyn-based Daniel Patrick Carbone with Hide Your Smiling Faces. New York Times critic Stephen Holden compared him to the philosopher-turned-filmmaker Terrence Malick, and it’s not a stretch. His film follows two young brothers who do not…
When Wally Pfister won an Oscar for Inception, his sixth film with Christopher Nolan, he went home and put the statuette on his mantel. “And then it moved to the corner, and then my office, and then the closet because you go away for a few months, and then it…
Consider the space you’re occupying as you read this. It exists because someone you’ve probably never thought about envisioned and created it. So, go home tonight and instead of watching some of the crap that passes for late night TV, catch the public television premiere of Cool Spaces! The Best…
Sometimes it’s helpful to know certain details about how a film has come together. And sometimes it’s just so much information. Transcendence, the directorial debut of Christopher Nolan’s go-to cinematographer, Wally Pfister, was shot on film rather than digitally, as most big Hollywood movies (and nearly all small ones) are…
We’ve been told to never judge a book by its cover, but we always secretly judge a movie by its teaser image. In last month’s Miami International Film Festival program, one image stood out — a man in a royal-blue suit. It was Jude Law as we’ve never seen him…
