The beauty of the Miami International Film Festival is how it features plenty of up-and-coming filmmakers and short films, while at the same time sprinkling in the occasional big name or two. Featured in the program this year is a film starring Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard, who are by…
Still fiending for more film greatness? Don’t sweat it, because the 31st-annual Miami International Film Festival is only half-finished. Theaters from South Beach to Wynwood to Coral Gables are still screening features long and short, foreign and domestic, starring big names and hot upstarts, with plenty of red-carpeted premieres to…
According to lore, Liberace used to greet the tourists who’d come by bus to gawk at his bejeweled home with the line, “I hope you like it. After all, you paid for it!” Not everyone has to like Rob Thomas’ Veronica Mars, the feature-length incarnation of his much-loved television series,…
Think adapting War and Peace is difficult? Try adapting the racecar videogame Need for Speed. Tolstoy’s 1,225-page behemoth has nothing on the Electronic Arts franchise’s irreconcilably complicated 20-year, 20-installment history: Sometimes cars are subject to physics; sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they’re invulnerable; sometimes they break. Maybe you’re in London; maybe…
Tyler Perry probably wishes he’d been raised by a single mom. As he has said in interviews, his father, Emmitt, was abusive and once beat him so hard with a vacuum hose that his skin felt flayed. In response, the writer-director reveres mothers, synthesizing his mom and aunt into the…
The second and final weekend of the Miami International Film Festival now approaches, and there is still so much to see. This year has proven especially rich in finely executed cinema, but no sane person can see it all, especially since many screenings overlap (it’s no easy task coordinating close…
One of the subtle ways the Miami International Film Festival has reinvented itself for its 31st year is presenting a festival that only projects digitally. There is not a single 35mm film in the festival. It marks a new era in cinematic presentation, and, over the weekend, one of the…
If you were to survey people who pay attention to movies — to go door-to-door with a clipboard, a sharpened No. 2 pencil, and a sheaf of forms with the word SURVEY printed in clean block letters across the top, later to be tabulated on a vintage Underwood adding machine…
As of this writing, the Netflix Instant catalog boasts more than 10,000 titles available for online streaming — a number that, as per the official Netflix rhetoric, seems colossal. But the landscape of this digital paradise may not be quite so idyllic. As classic film enthusiast Jaime Christley reminds us,…
During one scene in Monica Peña’s debut feature, the cryptically-titled Ectotherms, four young people nestle in the shade between two derelict double-decker buses and bitch about their high school grades. The scene unfolds in an unseen lot in Miami. The surreal presence of buses normally seen on the streets of…
On March 5, the Miami film community rejoiced at the announcement that the Miami Community Redevelopment Agency, headed by chairman Marc Sarnoff, is set to invest $11.5 million of taxpayer money to transform the downtown school board skills center into the new 70,000-square-foot Miami Entertainment Complex (MEC). MEC, to be…
it’s all in the reflexes.” Few actors have had better ones than Kurt Russell, who makes a welcome return to theaters this weekend in The Art of the Steal. Having been largely MIA since starring in Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 Death Proof, Russell remerges at an opportune time, since there’s still…
No Hollywood director could get away with pushing the limits of awkward pubescent sexuality quite like Mexican filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke in his latest film, Club Sandwich. Eimbcke goes places beyond cringe-worthy that will feel strikingly real to anyone who’s survived that terrible transition phase. He has no shame exploring –…
Though seemingly far from over, John Turturro’s career received a crowning award from the Miami International Film Festival Sunday night. The beloved character actor and director arrived in Miami to receive his 2014 Career Achievement Award on stage at the Olympia Theater at Gusman Center for the Performing Arts. The…
Before there was Grumpy Cat, or Nyan Cat, or Lil Bub, there was Cherry Pop. A sweet, fluffy purebred Persian cat, Cherry Pop was the apple of her owner’s eye. Her owners also happened to be filthy rich and spoiled her rotten. In Cherry Pop: The Story of the World’s…
For Samuel Albis and Alessandra Gherardi, this year’s Miami International Film Festival will forever hold a special place in their hearts, because making its world premiere is their first-ever film, Chub. This collaborative effort from the husband and wife duo marks her first screenplay and his directorial debut – and…
Like any good left-leaning, open minded, modern American, when it was announced that the Confucius Institute at Miami-Dade College would be pairing up with the Miami International Film Festival (MIFF), I broke out my changshan, checked to make sure my chi was in balance, and made reservations at my favorite…
In 2006, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program, a project founded in Cambridge and co-supported by the Miami-based One Laptop per Child Association, implemented a long-in-the-works project to get laptop computers to children in developing countries. The possible culture shock of people in locations without running water but possible…
Remember turning 31 years old? If you’re old enough, maybe you partied hard enough that you don’t recall. If you’re too young, it’s surely not a number you’re very concerned about achieving. For the Miami International Film Festival, the 31st anniversary is shaping up to be a year to remember…
Ten years after the release of the Oscar-nominated Brazilian slum drama City of God, directors Cavi Borges and Luciano Vidigal catch up with the film’s cast in the documentary City of God — 10 Years Later. There are uplifting stories, such as that of Alice Braga, who has gone on…
Club Sandwich goes places that will feel very real to any survivor of the gauntlet of puberty. It has no shame exploring — and lingering on — some of the most common, if not sordid, moments many remember but few ever wish to recall. Be warned: The awkwardness quotient has…
Soft guitar chords and a view of calm waters against pale-green land instantly set the tone of Mateo. In a small town near the Magdalena River in Colombia, screenwriters Adriana Arjona and Maria Gamboa depict the world’s oldest struggle — good versus evil — in what can be best described…
