America may not have a functional government, a decent public transportation system, or a healthy collective BMI. But one thing we do have is talent in spades. And America’s Got Talent will be looking for their latest and greatest in Miami on October 26 and 27. Unlike lots of talent-based…
You’d think that the same strategies you use against the Olive Garden’s Never Ending Pasta Bowl would serve you well when negotiating the abundance of foreign film festivals that come to Miami. But stitching breadstick-shaped pockets inside your coat won’t help you this week when the 2013 Miami Italian Film…
There are definitely some geeks out there who are worried about Zero Charisma. Does the movie take a lot of cheap shots, or does it for once accurately show what it’s like to be a geek? Zero Charisma is more of a nuanced character study than a broad comedy, and…
During his 2012 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Herman Cain rhapsodized about the fence he’d build on the U.S.-Mexico border: 20 feet tall with barbed wire, electricity, and a moat. “And I would put those alligators in that moat!” he cheered. For Machete Kills, Robert Rodriguez built that fence but left…
After Tiller Visits the Last Three Clinics Performing Late-Term Abortions
Tom Hanks has built a career out of playing aggressively noble roles, so it’s only natural to want to see him taken down a peg. But it’s no fun to watch him suffer at the hands of Somali pirates in Paul Greengrass’s true-life adventure Captain Phillips. Hanks plays the commander…
Sometimes it’s the little things in a movie that get you. Early in George Tillman Jr.’s The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete, a bright but obstreperous 13-year-old inner-city kid — the Mister of the title, played by Skylan Brooks — bounces back from the trauma of getting an F…
Something’s seemed different about No. 1 American action hero Bruce Willis lately. His action movie output in recent years has mostly been stunt casting in mediocre sequels (The Expendables 2, G.I. Joe: Retaliation), or supporting roles in little-seen B-movies (Setup, Catch .44, Fire with Fire), as if he’s in a…
© 2013 – Troublemaker StudiosTrejo in Machete Kills.In this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, our critics discuss Captain Phillips and Machete Kills, both out on Friday, October 11…
I’m pretty sure the dumbest way to die is killing yourself upon discovering that faking your own death has tricked your forbidden lover into his or her own suicide. The second might be to get gutted in one of the jumbled, perfunctory sword fights that clang up the streets of…
A fragmented, self-important film noir veneration of a Hollywood icon; that’s Meditation, Creativity, Peace. Though the Eat, Pray, Love-esque title might imply that it’s a movie that champions positive personal gain through meditation, it instead only seems to advocate one thing: David Lynch. As part of III Points Festival this…
The parking was limited at the studio warehouse where Magic City was filmed, but that didn’t stop the cars from filling up the lot and parking along the street in order to get a piece of the live auction Saturday and Sunday. Playing on a flat screen TV (certainly not…
Mornin’, Miami! Did you party too hard at III Points this weekend? Drink your sorrows away after the Dolphins’ loss yesterday? Or do you just hate mornings? If you’re dragging this a.m., then congratulations — you have something in common with Miley Cyrus. On Saturday Night Live last weekend, Cyrus…
Perhaps the best and worst thing about young teenagers is that they’re capable of what George W. Bush fans used to call “great moral clarity.” In HBO’s sure-to-make-you-bawl documentary Valentine Road, Aliyah, a student at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, California, breaks down the differences between gayness and…
GravityOn this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, the Village Voice’s Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek both praise Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock), saying the director exhibits a “lovely human touch” with the film, which is set in space, and that it’s “so different than anything else…
“What a shitty place to die.” Whatever your feelings about Dallas, that’s a pretty harsh assessment. Then again, the character in Peter Landesman’s well-intentioned but unfulfilling Parkland who says it, an aide to fallen President John F. Kennedy, can probably be forgiven for his snotty Yankee attitude. Next month marks…
The most revealing film ever made about kids and the appeal of violent fantasy isn’t Battle Royale or an adaptation of Lord of the Flies. It’s the shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark that a couple of Mississippi buddies put together over the course of their adolescence. Every…
The Great Santini with a pinch of Straw Dogs in French wine country, Gilles Legrand’s You Will Be My Son recalls the “A” pictures Hollywood has basically stopped making. Whether Legrand’s alternately compelling and clichéd drama of father-son struggles achieves the greatness of the aforementioned films is another matter. Paul…
A quietly profound study of a complex marriage between two artists, Cutie and the Boxer details the relationship of Ushio Shinohara — an avant-garde icon known for his motorcycle sculptures and “action paintings” created by punching a canvas with paint-coated boxing gloves — and his loyal wife, Noriko. With regular…
For anyone itching to see Stephen Dorff portray an Israeli POW, your opportunity has finally arrived. Zaytoun follows Dorff’s Yoni, an Israeli pilot imprisoned by the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1982 Beirut. In captivity, he befriends Fahed (Abdallah El Akal), a fast-talking 12-year-old refugee and one of the PLO’s newly…
Some movies are so tense and deeply affecting that they shave years off your life as you’re watching, only to give back that lost time, and more, at the end. Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is one of those movies. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play astronauts — one a medical engineer,…
You think making it in the music business is hard? Tell that to Charles Bradley. But you might want to watch a documentary on his rise to the top first. The film Charles Bradley: Soul of America:, directed by Poull Brien and produced by Alexander Brough, follows Bradley through the…
