The spirit of Fellini hovers over Train of Life, the third so-called Holocaust comedy to come down the pike. Far superior to either Life Is Beautiful or Jakob the Liar, the French-language production has a silliness and a buffoonish humor reminiscent of Fellini’s Amarcord and Roma, yet somehow it feels…
The engaging and delightful low-budget feature Where’s Marlowe? began life as an unaired one-hour TV pilot. Somehow director Daniel Pyne and John Mankiewicz, his co-writer, have managed to expand their footage to roughly an hour and 40 minutes without any of the seams showing. That would be an accomplishment in…
A graduate of the eminent Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Paul Lisicky may teach creative writing for a living, but he admits to a childhood fascination with maps, streets, and towns. The sense of wonder was so encompassing that he confesses to still owning a box of maps, the detritus of a…
Psychedelic clothes may be hip on college campuses, but the political activism that went with them in the Sixties apparently is not. The sobering facts: Forty percent of Floridians between the ages of 18 and 24 registered to vote in the 1996 general election. Only half of those registered actually…
The first rule of Being John Malkovich is you do not look at the poster for Being John Malkovich! Sorry to crib from that inferior tale of incredible shrinking men (throw a rock at any multiplex marquee this season — please! — and you’ll hit several), but really, avoid that…
As the Twentieth Century grinds remorselessly to a close, Princess Diana, Monica Lewinsky, and JonBenet Ramsey continue to be held up by the media as signal figures of our time. Yet something tells me that when future historians look back on this period, the bulimic socialite, the kneepad-ready intern, and…
Scotsman Irvine Welsh became a literary sensation in Britain with the publication of his first novel, Trainspotting; and Danny Boyle’s film version of this depressing look at the underbelly of Edinburgh brought Welsh fame in America as well. Now director Paul McGuigan makes his feature debut with an adaption of…
Less a documentary than a memoir, the absolutely enchanting film Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember features Mastroianni reminiscing about his life and career, his extensive travels, the people with whom he worked (directors Fellini, Visconte, De Sica) and, above all, his love for the cinema. You don’t have to be terribly…
The peach-color, two-story house with a balcony overlooking Biscayne Boulevard appears more suited to a sleepy suburban street than a depressed urban throughway. But Uragami Fine Arts is not your average gallery and coffeehouse. Its inventor, 25-year-old Ignacio Velez, Jr., has constructed in his unlikely surroundings a whimsical setting in…
“People think of flamenco as Spanish, an Andalusian dance form, and it did develop in Spain. But actually it’s not very Spanish at all. It’s a mixture of the cultures that were living in Spain: the Moors, the Jews, the Gypsies, not really the Europeans. There is some European influence,…
Glen Berger’s new play, Great Men of Science, Nos. 21 & 22, is a disaster of such epic proportions it practically begs comparison to the Titanic and the Hindenberg. Indeed, ten minutes after it leaves port, so to speak, this world premiere by the author of A Suit to Please…
Locust Projects is located between the Design District and the so-called Media-Production-Entertainment District. It’s a project to house creativity, not people. A trio of young local artists formed LP, as they refer to it, and turned a crackhouse in a dilapidated Miami neighborhood into an arthouse. They set it (along…
Sophie, Totie, & Belle.
Trust Allison Anders and her old running mate Kurt Voss to come up with a piquant, carefully observed movie about tarnished hope, overfed vanity, and half-baked scheming on the treacherous L.A. music scene. They know the territory. In 1988 the ex-UCLA film school classmates wrote and directed Border Radio, one…
Based on his directorial debut, there are three things we can safely say about Antonio Banderas: 1) He’s an actor’s director — he can pick a good cast and coax great performances from them; 2) he knows how to make a good image and where to point the camera; and…
Wes Craven — purveyor of fine horror movies, including A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, and the Scream trilogy — has apparently decided to go “legit.” And with Music of the Heart, he has done so with a vengeance. The film’s only death is the result of…
It’s a slate-black night, the streets sopped, hard rain pounding, as several dozen men gather in a spacious backroom at a Miller Road church. The members of this little-known clan are clad in white pants and primary-color shirts adorned with fish. The leader summons three of his compatriots to the…
Actress/singer Nell Carter is having a bad day. By her own somewhat exaggerated account, it’s the worst day of her life. Seems the previous afternoon, after discovering several golden flecks in her mostly raven hair, she paid a visit to a chichi Beverly Hills salon in an effort to rid…
Are you going to Europe? South America? Do you need to know how to ask “Where is St. Sophia’s?” in Italian? How about “Where is Sophia Loren?” Both phrases are translated in the snappy musical travel guide, Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know. No actual travel advice is provided, but…
As you enter the Fredric Snitzer Gallery and begin looking at the pieces counterclockwise from the door, colors seem to drift past, from moss green to sanded-wood, from red to black. The abstract paintings of Lynne Golob Gelfman have an unusual expressive quality. Dabs of pigment recede within the confines…
Ever since the mid-’80s release of Emir Kusturica’s first two features — Do You Remember Dolly Bell? and When Father Was Away on Business (which was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar) — Kusturica has been the most internationally visible figure in Yugoslavian cinema (that includes all the former…
Actor Frank Whaley has appeared in more than 30 movies, including Swimming with Sharks and Pulp Fiction. But none of them cuts as close to the bone, I suspect, as Whaley’s debut in the writer-director ranks, Joe the King. Set in the Seventies and carefully described by its maker as…
