For the protagonists of cable dramas, sex and death are twin forces of titillation, pressure valves for frustrated middle-aged men or steely-eyed careerists. That’s also true for the audience of cable dramas, of course, but there’s a reason we eagerly pursue onscreen what often makes us squirm in real life:…
The seemingly stark divide between sleep and wakefulness serves as the main motif in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendor, which allegorizes the history of Thailand as deepest REM slumber. Weerasethakul’s works are sensory delights, haunted, if obliquely, by Thailand’s violent political past and still fractious present. A film about the…
This patchy comedy about a cossetted, obnoxious gymnast who has slid deep into sloth in the decade or so since her Olympic triumph gets an occasional laugh from the American ills it sends up: jingoism, the sports-industrial complex, home-schooling, fast-food gluttony. The scattershot jabs pepper the flaccid storyline of the…
Why is it that little movies about being out of step so often wind up feeling the same? Not long into Michael Showalter’s Hello, My Name Is Doris, a comedy about a misfit frump pining for a much younger hunk, the unlikely target of the heroine’s affections muses to his…
In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot after attending a public rally. Rushed to the hospital, he died hours later. His assassin, Israeli ultranationalist Yigal Amir, is in prison for life, having achieved his goal: Without Rabin, the tentative Palestinian-Israeli peace process collapsed. Where’s the story in an…
On Friday night, the Miami International Film Festival premiered Dark Glasses, a film by a Cuban artist who is redefining the island’s cinema through esoteric visuals and an engrossing narrative. The future feels potent, accomplishing what contemporary cinema seems to have such a hard time at: cultivating authenticity. Jessica Rodriguez’s Pinar del…
It was no surprise to Colombian writer/director Ciro Guerra when his movie, Embrace of the Serpent, didn’t win an Oscar this year. When New Times spoke to him a few weeks prior about his nomination, he laughed and said, “Honestly, I have no idea how it works. I’m just very…
Through the course of history, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and Sen. Jesse Helms have been linked. With the documentary Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Inside Deep Throat) quickly get the connection out of the way in an opening montage…
Jia Zhangke is one of China’s great living filmmakers. A master of the ordinary, he delivers quality that never falters. After his rich and violent film A Touch of Sin, Zhangke returns with something more intimate, though no less critical of China’s social fabric. Mountains May Depart follows a woman’s…
The Brothers Grimsby is a movie for those who thought Kingsman: The Secret Service didn’t go far enough. If all the exploding heads and anal-sex jokes and creative impalements of Matthew Vaughn’s tongue-in-cheek spy thriller didn’t do it for you, rest assured: This time, we get to see British super-agent…
According to Jessica Rodriguez, she is is one of only four female directors on the entire island of Cuba. “It’s mind blowing to me that with such a rich filmmaking history, Cuban cinema still doesn’t have a place for female directors,” she says, collecting her long dark hair up in…
In one key way, the kinda-maybe sequel 10 Cloverfield Lane might be the purest example yet of the J.J. Abrams house style. Directed by first-timer Dan Trachtenberg but produced by Abrams (Super 8, Lost, Alias, Cloverfield, etc.) the thriller is yet another of the fannish wunderbrand’s mystery boxes, a genre…
Hearts of Palm, world-premiering at the Miami International Film Festival this week, sorrowfully repeats the phrase “El la amaba y ella lo amaba” (“He loved her and she loved him”). The repetition emphasizes what audiences know from the moment the movie begins: filmmaker Monica Peña is telling a story about…
Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato are riding high on the buzz from their documentary’s first screening at Miami Dade College’s Miami International Film Festival. They were surprised at the amount of moving comments they heard from festival goers who stood up to ask questions after the East Coast Premiere of…
Miami-based documentary filmmaker Orlando Rojas feels a bit anxious. His first film in nearly 15 years is having its world premiere at the grandest venue of Miami Dade College’s 33rd-annual Miami International Film Festival: the Olympia Theater. Nearly two weeks before the premiere, Rojas was still tinkering with the sound…
A legitimate stunner in that word’s truest sense, Colombian director Ciro Guerra’s river-trip Embrace of the Serpent mesmerizes and jacks with you, leaving you not quite certain, at its end, how to go about the rest of your day. The film is beautiful and ferocious, calm and torrential, a plunge…
Since the dawn of the revolution, Cuba’s state-sponsored cinema has been controversial and intellectually crafted. In the 1960s, Memories of Underdevelopment and De Cierta Manera marked a golden age of nuanced social critique within the confines of the revolution’s dismal sense of humor. But the Special Period wrought dire economic circumstances, forcing the…
It’s a new month, so that means a new list of classic movies. March offers an abundance of films in Miami, specifically because of the Miami International Film Festival happening the first two weeks, but that doesn’t mean the cinemas are stopping the good ol’ classics, though. Here’s what your…
The third season of Broad City (Comedy Central) opens with a toilet-centric montage that already feels like one of the year’s TV highlights. At once exuberant, absurd and all-too-real, a split screen reveals besties Ilana (Ilana Glazer) and Abbi (Abbi Jacobson) living their best lives in their respective bathrooms. They…
Miami is a relatively young city, so few of its buildings have been standing for more than a century. The Tower Theater, on SW Eighth Street, is close enough to that triple-digit number. Built in 1926, the movie theater celebrates its 90th birthday this year. Throughout the decades, it has…
Now that the Oscars are over, serious movie fans can explore film without the hype awards ceremonies. Miami-Dade College’s 33rd Miami International Film Festival will be a haven for those cinephiles, says Jaie Laplante, the festival’s director of programming six years running. Speaking via phone, he recommended five lesser-known films he…
Two movies, same scenario: Moments before a scheduled execution, just as the blade or gas pellet is set to deliver its fatal blow, the hero bursts into the room and carries the victim to safety. Banter is exchanged: “What took you so long?” “Traffic was a bitch.” “What took you…
