Among the countless quotable lines from Cocaine Cowboys, director Billy Corben’s influential documentary about the Miami Drug War, is this summary of the population of prewar Miami Beach, from one blunt observer: It consisted of “a lot of old people just sitting on rocking chairs waiting to die.” Corben didn’t linger on the porch sitters much. He cut to the chase, which is … [Read more...]
Where everybody had an Uncle Joe: Making ‘The Last Resort’
Fresh from its area premiere at the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival, a popular documentary of the history of Miami Beach, its transition from a retirees’ community to a hip, young multicultural club scene, and the two local photographers who chronicled its heyday, The Last Resort, arrives in theaters this Friday. Co-directors Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch both grew up … [Read more...]
Prestige layout suffocates authenticity of ‘Never Look Away’
Never Look Away, the sweeping new Oscar bait from Germany’s Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, is never better than when it watches paint dry. Or, rather, when it watches its central character, modern artist Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling), watch paint dry. I’m referring specifically to a segment near the home stretch of this 188-minute sprawl when, after years of replicating … [Read more...]
Hard-to-classify ‘Image Book’ a rigorous challenge from Godard
Just a few weeks ago on this site, I reviewed Guy Maddin’s ludic film-history pastiche The Green Fog. In it, I referenced one of the movie’s more rigorous forbears: Histoire(s) du Cinema, Jean-Luc Godard’s eight-part philosophical treatise, completed over a 10-year period and collaged entirely from upcycled images. This must be a boomtime for film essays composed of … [Read more...]
‘Cold War’ a bleak, brilliant torch song of addictive love
Cold War is one of those black-and-white films that you cannot imagine in color, so austere is the world the characters inhabit. It begins in the Polish countryside in 1949, a desolate landscape of postwar rubble. But even when the setting changes years later, to a go-go Paris of jazz clubs, lavish soirées and bartop dancing, the stark photography still seems appropriate. … [Read more...]
Big box office winners also dominate Oscar nominations
After a year when the Motion Picture Academy scrubbed its bad idea to create an Oscar category for Most Popular Picture, some of the highest-grossing films were nominated for the top statuette of 2019. Black Panther became the first superhero movie to earn a Best Picture nomination, poised to compete against two other mainstream popular high box office films – Bohemian … [Read more...]
Capsule reviews: Four movies at the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival
Here are capsule reviews of four films showing in the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival, which opens Sunday and runs through Feb. 12. The Last Resort: What begins as a nostalgic look at the changing face of Miami Beach turns much darker in The Last Resort, a history of the 1970s cultural transformation of the area as seen through the lenses of two fascinated young … [Read more...]
Jewish Film Festival returns, landing important premieres
For the past three decades, January in Palm Beach County has been synonymous with an international array of Jewish-themed movies. And beginning Sunday, the 29th annual Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival screens 33 such selections – many of them world, Florida or county premieres – at four venues over 21 days. This will also be the sixth such event for … [Read more...]
Shymalan holds ‘Glass’ up to his devotees, but few others
How many times can an artist deconstruct his craft and still surprise us? How often can a magician reveal his illusions and still leave us flummoxed? This is the challenge facing M. Night Shyamalan, Hollywood’s most esoteric trickster, as he burrows ever deeper into the cocoon of his cinematic universe, not so much playing to mainstream audiences as to film theorists, comic … [Read more...]
Maddin’s ‘Green Fog’: I left my angst in San Francisco
A work of ecstatic cinephilia run gloriously amok, Guy Maddin’s The Green Fog both is and isn’t a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Climaxing at a brisk 63 minutes and composed entirely of scenes from other movies and TV shows shot in San Francisco — 101 titles made the cut, from more than 200 Maddin viewed for inspiration — The Green Fog is an example of director as … [Read more...]