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From Up on Poppy
Hill From Up
on Poppy Hill is a cool breeze that smells of sea salt and
fresh fish. It's that first ray of sunlight that greets you early
in the morning, gingerly nudging you awake. It's that collegiate
slap on the back that says, “You're part of the gang, let's change
the world together.” It is also that ashen look that marks the
moment you realize the object of your affection might not feel the
same way about you.
Inocente
The jaw-droppingly inane
paintings assault the senses like a bout of indigestion. One
misbegotten work of “art” gives way to another, and I'm fighting
the temptation to yell at the screen. Internally, though, I'm
screeching myself hoarse. “Awful!” “Don't make me gag!” “Sunshine
and rainbows?! Blech!” “The creator of Uglydolls is on the phone.
He'd like his designs back.”
The art...
Martin
Freeman
Remember that scene in Wonder Boys where Katie Holmes
tactfully gives Michael Douglas her feedback on that mammoth novel
he can't quite seem to finish? Writing's about making choices, she
tells her former teacher as she throws his own lesson back at
him.
That little pearl of wisdom applies to the Herculean task of adapting a beloved piece of literature for the screen. Peter Jackson ought to be reminded of it.
John
Hawkes "I
know in my heart that God will give you a free pass on this one. Go
for it," Father Brendan tells Mark O'Brien during one of their
sessions inside a Catholic church.
That "free pass" is the green light O'Brien needs to lose his virginity at the age of 38, but the film The Sessions is no 40-Year-Old Virgin. For O'Brien, a quadriplegic who, after suffering a bout of polio as a young boy, spends much of his time in an iron lung, it's about not only the sex, but about feeling what it's...
Denis
Lavant The
audience sits in the darkened auditorium, their barely visible
faces frozen in an expressionless state of suspended animation. Are
they actually staring at the screen...doing nothing? Such lazy
passivity, proclaims French auteur Leos Carax (Lovers on the
Bridge) in the surreal opening sequence of his deliriously
transporting gem Holy Motors, is nothing less than obscene.
If you're taking the plunge with me, he appears to warn, this is
not who you're going to be. Not while I'm at the wheel.
The
Group Quartet
An A-list cast that includes Philip Seymour Hoffman,
Christopher Walken, and Catherine Keener create beautiful music
together and a lot of drama in A Late Quartet. The
threesome, along with Mark Ivanir, play members of a New York-based
classical string quartet named Fugue, who, after 25 years, are
starting to see cracks in their relationship.
When Walken's character, Peter, gets a diagnosis of early stages of Parkinson's disease, he decides it's time for him to retire from the...
Clint
Eastwood has gone from Dirty Harry to Grumbling Gus in twilight
roles of his career, but the curmudgeonly characters maintain that
Eastwood spark, which have made the now 82 year old a legend in
American cinema.
In "Trouble With the Curve" he plays Gus Lobel, a famous baseball scout who has drafted some of the biggest names in the game. He likes his life. He lives alone, eats Spam out of a can for breakfast, and orders pizza topped with Canadian bacon to be delivered by 10 a.m. Not ready to be benched, he's determined to keep his eye on the ball even though his eyes are failing. His doctor tells him he has glaucoma and macular degeneration, which won't come as a surprise to moviegoers after...
David
Siegel, Jacqueline Siegel
As the stretch limo pulls into a Central Florida McDonald's
drive-thru, you might ask yourself what is wrong with this picture.
It's one of many incongruous, stranger-than-fiction moments
captured by director Lauren Greenfield in The Queen of
Versailles, an eye-opening portrait of fading wealth that
begins like a real-life variation on a Christopher Guest comedy and
then morphs into a somber study of a marriage in foreclosure. It's
one hell of a tonal shift, executed with a devilish sense of humor
and a stubborn refusal to...
Who can
resist this opening line? "Just 'cause I'm telling you this story
doesn't mean that I'm alive at the end of it. It's that kind of a
story where things got so out of control."
“Savages” has all the components of a great movie — a story written by Don Winslow, one of the top crime novelists of the 21st century, the filmmaking finesse of three-time Oscar winner Oliver Stone, and a cast of actors who range from big-name stars (Salma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro) that have been around the block to up-and-comers who are, right now, the toast of Hollywood (Blake Lively, Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson). Plus, the story is a virtual cornucopia of rich...
Mark
Duplass, Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt
Why do people recoil when someone refers to a film as
“talky”? The word has mistakenly been used as a euphemism for
boring and static in the movie world for far too
long.
Enter mumblecore, a term used to describe a series of low-budget indie films released during the last decade. Titles like Funny Ha Ha and The Puffy Chair revolved around hapless twentysomethings' unremarkable lives and their rambling, often improvised conversations. Well, those...
Sebastian Urzendowsky,
Lola Créton Many love
stories require suspension of disbelief in order for viewers to
fall under their spell. We tolerate – and occasionally embrace –
the clichés to have a good cry. Audiences have grown so accustomed
to convention in this genre that when a movie like Goodbye
First Love comes along, the effect might initially be
disorienting. I kept searching for any hint of contrivance in this
brutally honest chronicle of a decade in the lives of a young
Parisian couple, but I came up empty-handed. The film, which opens
Friday at the...
Jason
Patric Guy Maddin's a nut,
and I wouldn't want it any other way. Unless, of course, he's just
spinning his wheels.
The Winnipeg native's latest black-and-white pastiche, the genre mashup Keyhole, is campy and moody in equal measures. The film, which screens this weekend only at the Bill Cosford Cinema and at the Miami Beach Cinematheque thru Wednesday, is also one of the eccentric Canuck's most self-indulgent efforts. It offers plenty of delirious pleasures for his devoted following, and also makes a case for his detractors as to why he should, you know, rein it in once in a while. For all the Maddin haters out there...
A
career in ballet means a lifelong commitment, both from those
youngsters driven – or insane – enough to shoulder the tough
challenges it entails, and from their (sometimes obsessive) parents
as well. First Position, easy to digest and curiously
nondescript, tackles this subject with a performer's awe-inspiring
discipline, but it bears none of the flair that separates the
merely competent from the truly gifted.
The documentary, which continues an exclusive run at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, follows six underage hopefuls vying for top awards at the 2010 Youth America Grand Prix, the world's largest international student dance competition. It not only draws over 5,000 dancers aged 9 through 19; more importantly, it also brings...
Sebastian
Brodziak and Patrick Wang In the
Family tells a story about reclaiming your life after forces
beyond your control have taken away everything you hold near and
dear. Patrick Wang, the film's writer, director and star, tackles
volatile subject matter – a custody battle involving a six-year-old
boy, his aunt, and her brother's Chinese American live-in lover –
and conveys the topic's urgency, not by ratcheting up the tension,
but by allowing the material to breathe. The results are
revelatory. Over the course of nearly three hours, a potentially
distancing technique instead draws the audience...
Anna
Hutchinson The most effective
horror films transport you to dark places you probably wouldn't
want to frequent outside the cozy confines of your local multiplex
or TV room couch. They force you to confront your fears, whether
you like it or not. Cabin in the Woods, a genre-bending
collaboration between Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss
Whedon and Cloverfield screenwriter Drew Goddard, takes you
somewhere disturbing, all right: inside these smart alecks'
overactive minds. Sitting through this cleverly constructed yet
thoroughly artificial exercise in genre...
Cyril Catoul is a punk. The disruptive, annoyingly stubborn pipsqueak at the heart of the Belgian import The Kid with a Bike proves once and for all that bratty behavior knows no international borders.
The film, which shared the Grand Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival with the Turkish entry Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and screened last month at the Miami International Film Festival, is the latest piece of cinema vérité from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, The filmmaking duo have made a career out of their clear-eyed, non-judgmental portraits of working-class people facing complex ethical dilemmas. Are you one of those viewers who gets pissed off whenever your favorite directors repeat themselves? The...
You're asking for trouble when you take on Snow White. The word “quixotic” comes to mind. Walt Disney, after all, turned the beloved Brothers Grimm fairy tale into the very first animated feature in 1937. A few made-for-TV productions aside, filmmakers have refrained from climbing this snow-capped mountain. Why mess with a classic, even in live action?
The answer, according to the uniquely stylish Tarsem Singh (The Cell, last year's...
Out in the Tropics, a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender contemporary performing arts festival, continues its impressive line-up of award-winning, cutting edge artists with Lip Service, a night of storytelling, on June 18. Lip Service is an ongoing storytelling series that features true stories. “This is an ongoing project,” says Robert Rosenberg, Out in the Tropics Festival Artistic Director. “It returns to the Miracle Theater where it’s been performed before." This performance includes featured storytellers: Andrea Askowitz, Nick Garnett, Christopher Gilbert, Lisa Merritt, Jeanne Panoff, Adriana Paramo, David Rosenberg, and Andrea Zarchin. Lip Service, June 18 at 8 p.m. Miracle Theater is located at 280 Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. For more information visit www.outinthetropics.org.
David
closed the window, then smiled at his friend Diego. The rapt
audience watched in silence as the two men – one straight, one gay
– fell into each other's arms, embracing for the first, and perhaps
the last, time. The screen at the Karl Marx Theater went dark, and
the lights came back on at the world premiere of Strawberry and
Chocolate. The warm applause that greeted the debut of this
Oscar-nominated comedy on opening night of the 15th
Havana Film Festival suggested that Cuban cinema was about to head
in an intriguingly progressive direction. A certain 21-year-old
college student took in all the good vibes on that cool December
night back in 1993, and he felt certain the future for that
country's cinematic output looked very bright indeed.
Fast forward 18 years. Another...
Steve Gladstone
Guerilla Opera!
When you least expect it, a tenor sneaks up behind you and renders you helpless with a high-C.
The Florida Grand Opera joined forces with the 2012 Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival presented by FOOD & WINE to create a flashmob-style operatic performance during the Tribute Dinner presented by Bank of America, part of The New York Times Dinner Series. Charlie Trotter and Piero Antinori were honored on Saturday, Feb. 25 at the Loews Miami Beach.
The opera singers were cleverly disguised as waiters and also as guests, sitting for dinner among the other attendees...