Here are capsule reviews of some movies scheduled for the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival, which opens today: ABOUT FIFTY (10/21, 7:30 p.m., Sunrise Civic Theatre; 10/24, 6:15 p.m., Sunrise Civic Theatre; 10/29, 7 p.m., Muvico Pompano) -- Most rites-of-passage films have been about the mysteries of puberty, but as filmmakers age they begin confronting the latter passage of … [Read more...]
The View From Home 31: New releases and notable screenings, Oct. 11-Nov. 1
Here’s the long and short of it: Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross’ documentary The Shock Doctrine (Zeitgeist, $26.99) attempts to explain, in 80 minutes, what journalist Naomi Klein proposed in her 600-page best-seller of the same name: that the neoliberal, free-market capitalistic ideas of Milton Friedman are the root cause of our economic perils yesterday, today and … [Read more...]
The winter season in film: Cooler months offer likely Oscar candidates
Sorry, fans of superheroes and special effects, the summer is over and Hollywood is ready to bring out its A-list (for “Adult”) fare. This is the season for films of substance, even if Tom Cruise is back with his fourth Mission: Impossible flick, director David Fincher is trying to remake a Swedish film noir into a domestic blockbuster and Martin Scorsese tries his hand at … [Read more...]
The 2011-12 season in Palm Beach art: Ghosts, gods, bodies and wildlife
The state of all things is pretty much still looking gray and uncertain, which makes the list of shows and exhibits you are about to read possibly the only piece of good and colorful news you hear in a while. By the time you are done reading this, I predict, there will be several shows competing for your attention. My advice? Write them down. The artists and creations hitting … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 23-25
Film: Like the hummingbird that should not be able to fly, the movie Moneyball should not be as involving and widely accessible as it is. After all, it is the story of how baseball’s Oakland A’s leveled the playing field, so to speak, against much richer teams like the Yankees by employing obscure statistics to choose a winning team of players. That sounds like a formula for … [Read more...]
‘Margueritte’ sweet and sentimental, but not much else
From its title to the age-defying friendship at its core, the French import My Afternoons With Margueritte has the Chicken Soup odor of Tuesdays With Morrie. Directed by movie-of-the-week sentimentalist Jean Becker (Conversations With My Gardener), it follows a similar emotional journey as Mitch Albom’s breakthrough, charting the developing relationship between a lonely, … [Read more...]
‘Contagion’ and ‘Warrior’: Strong films of viral, and human, conflict
For those who have been stressing lately over deadly earthquakes and hurricanes, worry instead about tiny viruses that travel with unexpected speed around the globe transported by a cough or a handshake. Oh, to have the surgical mask concession at movie theaters showing Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, a star-packed exercise in medical paranoia told with a muted style instead of … [Read more...]
Artist Neuenschwander’s work draws power from the viewer
There’s one element to Rivane Neuenschwander’s artwork, now at the Miami Art Museum until Oct. 16, that probably won’t travel back with it to her native Brazil, yet it is an integral part of the exhibit: You. Yes, you bring more to Neuenschwander’s mid-career survey, A Day Like Any Other, than you could possibly imagine. In fact, without you, more than half of this exhibit … [Read more...]
Charming ‘Names’ charts unusual path to lasting love
A “political whore” with a noble cause and a shy Jewish scientist who worries too much about the avian flu meet, and last, in the French comedy The Names of Love (Le Nom des Gens), which is playing through Thursday at the Lake Worth Playhouse, Mos’Art Theatre and other area art houses. The buzz about these two eccentric characters, Baya Benmahmoud and Arthur Martin (played by … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 27-30
Film: Those who fell victim to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme probably do not have the stomach to sit through Chasing Madoff, Canadian director Jeff Prosserman surprisingly involving analysis of how the former Palm Beacher duped the investment system and how the Securities and Exchange Commission was asleep at the switch, despite investigative reporters blowing the whistle. … [Read more...]