Universal’s New Transformers Ride Is More Than Meets the Eye

The Transformers Ride in 3D at Universal Studios Orlando had its grand opening yesterday, an event made all the more spectacular with explosions, a flyover, and appearances from the Transformers themselves. It was a showcase worthy of a Michael Bay movie–quite appropriate, as the ride takes after Bay’s modern Transformers…

Much Ado About Nothing Is Joss Whedon at His Best

In Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, Iron Man gets off a good burn on Thor during their intramural fight in the woods: “Shakespeare in the park?” he says. “Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?” Like any good Shakespearean pastiche, The Avengers began in media res, with a glowy cube thing…

In The East, Brit Marling Saves the World From the World-Savers

You’re either with Brit Marling or you’re against her. The 29-year-old blond filmmaker (who describes herself on Twitter as a tree climber/actor/writer/producer) catapulted out of obscurity in 2011 with two obfuscatory indies — Sound of My Voice and the mournful sci-fi drama Another Earth. Marling specializes in films about faith,…

In The Kings of Summer, Life Is a Sitcom

It’s to the great detriment of The Kings of Summer that it follows the identically premised Mud by just weeks. Both films tell bittersweet coming-of-age stories about teenage friends who learn how to become men in a soon-to-be-corrupted Eden, and both are questionably embellished by a predictable teen romance, an…

Fill the Void, a Betrothal Drama, Illuminates Hasidic Life

Rama Burshtein’s Fill the Void opens on green leaves, smiling faces, lush billows of fabric that when pieced together, the sensuous images accumulating into a fuller picture, become a wedding dress, tulle and silk diffusing the glow. Engagements, weddings, births, and deaths: This film is a more traditional kind of…

Monsters University: Wild Things, Housebroken

Terrorizing children in their bedrooms remains the existential concern of the toothy blobs, hams, and pop-pom-furred Wild Things that populate Monsters movies, many of whom look like gummy nothings long stuck to the bottom of Pixar’s junk drawer. Their very lives depend upon coaxing night-screams from human kids, a premise…

Disney TV Is Poisoning Your Daughters

I recognize that, even coming from a father of two preteen daughters, that might sound alarmist, so let me elaborate—the Disney Channel and its prime competitor, Nickelodeon’s Teen Nick, are a pox upon our tween nation, corrosive forces that impart more awful messages than any of Disney’s retrograde princess films…

One Track Heart: The Coolness of Krishna Das

In One Track Heart, after reciting a spiritualist maxim about servitude or self-abnegation or the like, Krishna Das has the unfortunate habit of letting his gaze linger on the camera, eyebrows raised, head just perceptibly nodding as if to say “How indisputably cool was that?” Jeffrey Kagel, the subject of…

Miami Family Breaks Out with Breakup at a Wedding

When Breakup at a Wedding has its Miami premiere at O Cinema tomorrow night, there may be almost as many Miami natives on screen as in the theater. That’s because the director and the star of the comedy are brothers Victor and Philip Quinaz, who are returning home with their…

Find Johnny Depp on the Beach, Win a Trip to the Desert

The latest Hollywood promotion to roll through South Florida is also one of its creepiest. And considering that it involves noted weirdo Johnny Depp, that’s not surprising. Depp’s next movie is Disney’s The Lone Ranger, due in theaters July 3. And in a bizarre scavenger hunt/wax museum twist, statues of…

First IMAX Home Theater System to Be Installed in Miami Beach

Miami’s movie geeks have plenty of reasons to be proud. This town has a thriving art house theater scene, some of the best film festivals in the country, and increasing numbers of films by locals earning national and worldwide respect. Some pictures even screen here before they debut in New…

Man of Steel Is for Real

Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel is a movie event with an actual movie inside, crying to get out. Despite its preposterous self-seriousness, its overblown, CGI’ed-to-death climax, and its desperate efforts to depict the destruction of, well, everything on Earth, there’s greatness in this retelling of the origin of Superman; moments…

Superman Movies Matter More Than the Comics: A Film-by-Film Breakdown

Superman is an idea. OK, fine. Technically he’s an intellectual property—a set of data points slammed together by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the 1930s, sold for $130 to National Allied Publications (later DC Comics/TimeWarner), and subsequently transformed into a nugget of multivariously exploitable content that has netted entertainment…

This Is the End: Absurd, Ridiculous, Hilarious

From the peak of Anchorman to the nadir of Burt Wonderstone, the formula for studio comedies of the past 20 years has been simple: Dude acts like a dick for an hour, turns blandly sweet toward the end, and then everyone on the DVD commentary can claim to have made…