Robert J. Escandon, a Miami director, actor, and therapist, breaks the confines of tradition — especially when it comes to filmmaking. He and his tight crew, which includes wife Ashley, are Masterflow Productions. His movies involve characters with tormented psyches who are experiencing some sort of torture — be it…
It’s back, bitches: Basketball Wives season three is here. From moment one, the ladies start hating on Royce Reed. Literally, in the first five minutes of the program, it’s pretty much decided by the HBIC (Head Bitch in Charge) that Miss Reed is a “non-mother f***ing factor.” So, yeah, she…
A deceptively light time-travel romance, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris uses fairy-tale devices as a way to get to the filmmaker’s familiar themes. A nebbishy screenwriter who longs to publish a novel, Gil (Owen Wilson) is working on a book set in a nostalgia shop–much to the open frustration of…
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…New Times hits you with Michael Miller’s feature “Snuffed”on how shark populations are increasing while fishermen disappear — okay so they’re not being eaten, but still. And as if on cue the Miami Science Museum is hosting its…
The Hangover Part II: Didn’t we already see this movie?
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: The soggy franchise returns
Meek’s Cutoff: fractured trust in 19th-century Oregon
Most sequels are born of good box office rather than good ideas–if you build it and they come, you simply must build another one. But it’s hard to imagine a more calculating, creatively bankrupt piece of real estate than The Hangover Part II. Trade out Las Vegas for Bangkok, a…
Chlorophyl, the 25-minute short directed by Miami native Barry Jenkins, stars first-time actress and Miami local Ana Trevino. It premiered at last month’s Borscht Film Festival. If you saw the movie, regardless of your opinion, it didn’t quite fit into the context of the arena in which it was presented…
We’ve been told the best things in life come in threes. Or is it the worst? Considering we all didn’t die Saturday, were going to go with best. Let’s see: Miami’s dream team, little pigs and let’s not forget sheets to the wind. And now, seasons of Basketball Wives. Yep,…
The following review was provided by Village Voice Media critic J. Hoberman, who was in Cannes for the festival.The last day screening of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s ruminative, challenging Once Upon a Time in Anatolia strengthened an exceptionally ambitious and coherent competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival–although Terrence Malick’s The…
Opening Friday at Coral Gables Art Cinema, Meek’s Cutoff, like all of director Kelly Reichardt’s previous features (River of Grass, Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy), is essentially a road movie about both the unequal distribution of power and resources and the frustrations of the disenfranchised. Tracking three hungry and thirsty…
Film Fiend features dispatches from Miami International Film Festival Director Jaie Laplante as he scopes flicks on the indie film festival circuit. As another Cannes Film Festival winds down, all the chic cineastes here on the Croisette are pretending not to care about the Grand Jury prizes, awarded in a glitzy ceremony…
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, which screens at O Cinema, lives up to its grandiose title, taken from the old Michelangelo potboiler. Vikram Jayanti’s BBC production is certainly a scoop, culled from 50 hours of interviews made during the reclusive Spector’s first trial–he was accused of sticking…
The Haircut, for many in attendance, was a delightful treat at last month’s Borscht Film Festival. Clocking in at a little over five minutes, the short was filled with wonderful twists and turns. If you recall, a man saunters into a barbershop at night feeling insecure about his haircut. He’s…
Cannes 2011: dysfunction junction
The Beaver: Mel Gibson can do crazy
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector: da doo ron ron
Film Fiend features dispatches from Miami International Film Festival Director, Jaie Laplante, as he scopes flicks on the indie film festival circuit. A “melancholy” mood has set over the Cannes Film Festival today: in a few hours, Film Fiend and 2,299 of his closest personal friends will settle into the…
Greatly expanded from a four-page, single-situation short story by Raymond Carver, Dan Rush’s first feature Everything Must Go is an ambitious if enervated vehicle for Will Ferrell–playing it straight as Nick Halsey, a middle-class drunk fired from his job and locked out of his suburban home by an irate, never-seen…
NBC may have passed on the Wonder Woman pilot, but ABC is moving forward with their own nostalgic version of crime-fighting, jiggle TV — Charlie’s Angels. The new series began filming in Miami back in January (perhaps some of you showed up for the casting call?) and will air Thursdays…
An earnest, intermittently droll dramedy about a manic-depressive toy manufacturer and his bewildered family, The Beaver is a parable that’s not easily parsed. While director Jodie Foster fails to maintain a consistent tone–could there be such a thing as inspirational satire?–the movie’s lopsided wobble is undeniably enhanced by her star…
