Miami International Film Festival Announces 2011 Winners

On Saturday night, the Miami International Film Festival closed their 10-day flick fest with a screening of Oscar-nominated Incendies and by honoring the winners in their cinema competitions. Among the international films, The Piano in a Factory, in which a laid-off steel worker does whatever he can to get his…

Tonight, Magic City Memoirs Puts Miami Under a Microscope

In Magic City Memoirs, Mikey, Manny, and Angel Jr. are three private school buddies. Three months before graduation, they are living the fast life of sex, drugs, and hip-hop in Miami. The story is narrated by Mikey, who is a top baseball prospect torn between living clean and joining his…

Tonight, Young Goethe in Love Romps Romantically into Gusman

In 1772, we find the young German poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe flunking out of law school and getting drunk with his friends. He’s a free spirit trapped in a stringent world where class is everything. All Goethe wants to do is write poems and get them published. But his stern…

Tonight, Mooney vs. Fowle Documents Miami High and Edison Pigskin

The 1961 state football championship game between rivals Miami High and Miami Edison is chronicled in pioneering director James Lipscomb’s engrossing documentary. Much like when he documented John F. Kennedy’s run for the White House in his critically acclaimed and candid film Primary, Lipscomb was given a rare, all-access look…

Real Housewives of Miami, Episode 3: Elsa Is a Witch, Duh

Miami is all about having a front. Things are rarely what they seem, especially in The Real Housewives of Miami. So we’re going to translate last night’s episode the best we can. Think of it as Real Housewives of Miami for Dummies, because we feel dumber for watching this show…

Tonight, Hamill‘s Throws Down at Regal Cinemas South Beach

It was only a matter of time before the world’s fastest-growing sport, mixed martial arts, got the Hollywood movie treatment. And Hamill certainly falls under formulaic sports flicks. But what makes it different is that our hero’s story is true and his achievement truly impressive, because UFC fighter Matt “the…

Tonight: Bobby Fischer Against the World at MIFF

This engrossing documentary by Liz Garbus examines Bobby Fischer’s tumultuous career as the world’s greatest chess grand master and the tortured genius that might have turned him into a paranoid reclusive. Bobby Fischer Against the World’s finest moments come during an analysis and chronicling of Fischer’s renowned, and at times…

Tonight: Project Nim Monkeys Around at MIFF

In his latest documentary, Project Nim, Academy Award-winning director James Marsh traces the extraordinary journey of a chimpanzee raised as a human. The project was the brainchild of Columbia University professor Herbert Terrance, who named the chimp Nim Chimpsky (a playful take on linguist and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky) in…

Tonight: MIFF’s Small Town Murder Songs at Regal Cinemas

Peter Stormare turns in a subdued but outstanding performance as a small-town police chief with a shady past in director Ed Gass-Donnelly’s Gothic character sketch Small Town Murder Songs. You might remember Stormare as the nihilist with a ferret in The Big Lebowski (“We belief in no-zing, Lebowski!”) or as…