In actual life, bureaucratic systems are the only workable state-citizen interface we’ve developed that can handle the sheer bulk of smelly, cranky humanity. In comedies, filmmakers often render the infinite and otherworldly in the mundane, human terms of bureaucracy, with all the waiting rooms, Muzak, and impossible regulatory complexities that…
As summer comic-book blockbusters go, The Wolverine is not as elephantine as it could have been. It’s more, well, wolverine–bony, loping, a little shaggy–and, blessedly, director James Mangold doesn’t get bogged down in mythology. You don’t need to diagram the convoluted relationships between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s X-Men characters…
“I kept thinking she was the ugly duckling who was going to turn into a swan,” a fortyish loudmouth complained as the crowd trudged out of a preview screening of The To Do List. “But she was an ugly duckling all the way through!” He was talking to two women…
With episode four of Dexter’s final season, “Scar Tissue,” we return back to the infamous shipping container. Proving yet again that this eighth season will continue to parallel its first season, Harry Morgan and the shipping container anchor the plot throughout this episode. Last week, we left off with Dexter…
During a meeting at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Miami, a chatty Javier Cámara cannot resist an opportunity to channel his plane steward character Joserra. “You need water,” he tells the trio of journalists gathered for the interview. “Let me serve you water. I play a stewardess in the film, after…
The Way, Way Back is a crowd-pleasing summer treat, predictable in its sweetness but satisfying all the same. It’s like the multinationally branded ice-cream sandwich you get on any pier in the Western Hemisphere — market-tested to appeal to as many people as possible (but you don’t mind gobbling up)…
With his anxious parable I’m So Excited!, Pedro Almodóvar imagines a plane malfunction not as a pretext for thrills, as in most films, but for a metaphorical farce: The jet is Spain, and what we should fear for is not only the passengers’ lives but also the country’s. Defective landing…
In this very talky, action-free thriller — a remake of a 1995 South Korean film — Amy (Heather Graham), a wannabe master chef, uses food to insinuate herself into the life of her neighbor, Saffron (Carrie-Anne Moss), a deeply depressed former child star. Amy is living in a fantasy world…
Something like half the running time of the engaging new don’t-go-into-the-basement thriller The Conjuring is devoted to showing us characters proceeding slowly into the basement, or into the maws of basement-like places we know they shouldn’t go, often with just matches or a flashlight to guide them. Twice, deliciously, they’re…
Incest, eyeball-gouging, interior decorating: If Only God Forgives is any indication, writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn is a man of many interests. He’s also put Kristin Scott Thomas in a blond wig and an assortment of cougar-mom outfits, which is either a plus or a minus, depending on how you look…
We have the Twilight franchise to thank for the fact that almost no sane adult wants to see another vampire movie, ever. Not that all the Twilight movies were bad. The first, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, hit a teen-dream sweet spot, the point where gothic lit meets the iPod. And…
A sommelier can incite intimidation, scorn, or trust, depending on who’s drinking and who’s pouring. Rarely, at least in America, do we take full advantage of proximity to those nerds with corkscrews. Somm follows four young men training hard to be Master Sommeliers, of which there are only 200 worldwide…
The characters inhabiting the three very French worlds of Catherine Corsini’s emotional thriller bear two common burdens: the weighty residual guilt of hit-and-run homicides, and strange compulsions to ruin their own lives for no apparent reason. When designated tragic hero Al (Raphaël Personnaz) accidentally runs over a man the night…
Big dreams come in small, slimy packages in Turbo, the story of a garden snail (Ryan Reynolds) who realizes his need for speed after a freak accident involving a hot rod’s nitrous oxide tank turns him hyperfast. Chastised for his racecar dreams by curmudgeonly brother Chet (Paul Giamatti), Turbo nabs…
There’s a gorgeous moment in Yoruba Richen’s documentary The New Black, currently playing the film festival circuit, in which two young black lesbian activists canvass an inner-city black neighborhood to drum up support for the gay marriage initiative that was on the ballot in Maryland’s 2012 statewide election. The women…
Less funny than her worst SNL sketch, Girl Most Likely strands Kristen Wiig in a dreadful, disingenuous city-vs.-suburbs comedy that mercilessly mocks New Jersey before turning around and celebrating its provincial trashiness over the hoity-toity snootiness of Manhattan. Fired from her job and dumped by her boyfriend, once-promising playwright Imogene…
The world is full of lackluster movies. But the world is not full of Helen Mirren in a Marlene Dietrich fedora, or Helen Mirren in full-tilt eveningwear disposing of a bothersome corpse in a marble bathroom, or Helen Mirren firing a massive rifle-type thingie while sprawled on a picnic blanket…
Nat Faxon and Jim Rash didn’t set out to make a comedy about divorce. Eight years ago, when the improv-comedians-turned-actors-turned-Oscar-winning-screenwriters started writing a coming-of-age script based on a particularly upsetting moment from Rash’s childhood, they just wanted a happy ending. Yet almost all of the characters in The Way, Way…
Last week, a great white shark was spotted off the coast of Key West. Last night, a giant storm left much of Miami under water. This morning, news broke that SyFy’s Twitter-famous TV movie Sharknado is getting a sequel. And it’s set in … New York? Really? See also: Forget…
Come December, Miami will have a new bayfront home for all things art. The long-awaited Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) will arrive around the time of Art Basel, but in the meantime, you can get a tease of what’s in store at a newly announced summertime film series. The Lights…
Darkness. That’s all we see as episode three, “What’s Eating Dexter Morgan,” starts up — darkness, and baby Harrison calling out “daddy, daddy.” Dexter gets worried as he follows what looks like a blood trail to the bathroom, only to find Harrison has eaten an entire box of cherry popsicles…
We’re not even halfway into the final season of Dexter yet, and it’s already looking like it’s going to be hard to say goodbye to our favorite serial killer. Fortunately, long after the show has met its (hopefully bloody) demise, fans can keep their memories alive with blood slides, just…
