As its subtitle suggests, one reason Errol Morris’s 2003 documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara proved so resonant is that its subject was partly a proxy for his most notorious professional successor, the decidedly less available Donald Rumsfeld. “I don’t do quagmires,”…
Imagine your last one-night stand (and if you’ve never had one, do us heathens a favor and keep your mouth shut). Now imagine how you left. Did you sneak out in the middle of the night? Did you make awkward small-talk over breakfast, then dip? Did you even give them…
It’s rare to find work in television or films that manage not to exploit a character with a developmental disorder. More often than not, every opportunity is taken to remind the audience that they’re not “normal,” and it’s incredibly unfortunate. Writer-director Louise Archambault leaves no question as to her main…
To say people are excited about the return of Game of Thrones is an understatement. More viewers are tuning in to watch the HBO series than ever before. The promise of another colorful wedding is only part of the appeal; the furthering of unexpected relationships and the welcome presence of…
There is something about a terrified Marlon Wayans that America loves. He made the first two Scary Movies, the memorable ones, and a decade later the people demand more of Marlon losing his shit. He returns in fine form for A Haunted House 2, a follow-up to 2013’s found-footage spoof,…
Celebrate the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival’s Sweet 16 starting Friday, May 2, with its opening night feature, The Way He Looks, at the Colony Theatre in South Beach. MGLFF is one of the largest LGBT film festivals around, and this year’s line up proves it. Featuring 64 films…
It’s been 5 million years since humanity hauled itself from the swamp, and according to Joe director David Gordon Green, we’re devolving back into muck. While the stoners of Green’s Pineapple Express regressed from men to boys after a few puffs of weed, this grimly beautiful drama starring Nicholas Cage…
The promise of seeing Scarlett Johansson fully nude is probably enough to lure lots of people into Jonathan Glazer’s alien-among-us fantasy Under the Skin, and the vision doesn’t disappoint: Her figure, seen in long shot, is a grand and glowing thing; she has one of those butts shaped, adorably, like…
A grave has been freshly dug in the opening shot of director Gareth Evans’ ultraviolent Indonesian flick The Raid 2. It’s a start, but Evans is going to need 400 more. In the first few minutes, Evans dispenses with three-quarters of the survivors of 2012’s The Raid: Redemption, the writer/director’s…
As video-on-demand continues to become the preferred route of distribution for a certain kind of independent film, much is being made of Nicolas Cage’s willingness to slum for a paycheck, with recent examples including already-forgotten, small-screen-friendly items like Seeking Justice, Trespass, Stolen, and The Frozen Ground. (His character names in…
Most of you might recognize her as Sheldon Cooper’s equally awkward girlfriend on The Big Bang Theory. Some of you might even pinpoint her for the quirky, ’90s golden child who wore oversized sunflowers on her head from the TV sitcom Blossom. Or, if you really want to throw it…
The notion of business over art isn’t something you often hear in young filmmakers, but Miami resident Jarrod Knowles is more than happy to view cinema through that scope. A long while in the making, his feature film What Lies Beyond… The Beginning is getting a red-carpet screening at AMC…
One movie genre predominantly male-driven since inception is action. You’ve got your classic scenario where a man is wrongfully crossed and goes on a mission to avenge his family and his honor, and there’s always plenty of bloodshed and flying bullets. Whenever women appear in these movies, they are typically…
Tucked into a pocket of his workout sweats, Steve Rogers — AKA Captain America, the serum-enhanced Yankee Doodle Dynamo who’s spent the past six decades in deep freeze — keeps a notebook of cultural beats he’s missed: Star Wars, Marvin Gaye, Thai food. (“We used to boil everything,” he mock-groans.)…
Our story resumes: Having found a love-like feeling for Jerôme (Shia LaBeouf), “restful domestic comfort” has, at the outset of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Volume II, robbed the young Joe (Stacy Martin) of her orgasm. Naomi Wolf documented a similar problem in her 2012 book Vagina; the similarities between Joe…
Why can’t women stay friends? That’s a trick question, of course, but also one that British actresses Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells — lifelong pals in real life — attempt to answer earnestly and honestly in their new HBO cringe comedy Doll & Em. In the six-episode series, Mortimer and…
Why can’t women stay friends? That’s a trick question, of course, but also one that British actresses Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells — lifelong pals in real life — attempt to answer earnestly and honestly in their new HBO cringe comedy Doll & Em. In the six-episode series, Mortimer and…
“I’ve interviewed a lot of nasty characters over the years,” says a cheerful Errol Morris over lunch on a bright Los Angeles day. “I’m a connoisseur of bullshit.” He’s sampled some of the finest: Holocaust deniers, murderers swearing their innocence, a beauty queen who claims she only kidnapped and raped…
Surrounded by thick, long black cables and hanging lights in a hotel room at the Mandarin Oriental sat Joe Manganiello. After hours of on-camera interviews in promotion for his latest film, Sabotage, this tall, muscular man could have been lost in the rubble had it not been for his crisp…
The Chicano labor leader César Chávez can now join Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela in the pantheon of heroes whose world-altering achievements are dutifully recounted in timid, lifeless films any substitute can pop into the school DVD player when the regular history teacher is out sick. With César Chávez, Mexican…
A friend of mine, who’s in his fifties, is getting an MFA in nonfiction writing. Many of the other students in his program are in their twenties, and most have no interest in writing any kind of nonfiction other than memoir. Everyone, it seems, has a story to tell, and…
To hear Darren Aronofsky tell it, in the interviews he’s given recently to the New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker, there was no way in hell he’d let his special-effects extravaganza Noah, years in the planning, be your run-of-the-mill, candy-ass Biblical epic. The ark built by Russell Crowe’s…
