Perhaps the most amazing thing about Asteroid City is that it actually exists. For the bean counters who fund the movies, eccentricity and experimentation are rarely inspiring motivators to open wallets, as evidenced by the Sisyphean career of Terry Gilliam. But somehow, even though his projects have by no means been consistently successful, Wes Anderson has managed to crack … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 18-19
Dance: Miami City Ballet opens its first show of the season this weekend at the Kravis Center with his triptych, Jewels. Divided into Emeralds, Rubies and Diamonds, and set to the music of Fauré, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky, this three-act ballet evokes French Romanticism, 20th-century modernism and Imperial Russia. While MCB has branched out considerably in its past few years, … [Read more...]
‘Last Flag Flying’: Grief and hope, down to the last detail
As Mark Twain reputedly said, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. I thought about this aphorism more than once during Last Flag Flying, Richard Linklater’s alternately amusing and somber heartstring-tugger about the victims of America’s misbegotten wars. Iraq was hardly a repeat of Vietnam, but it rhymed with bitter lucidity: two bloody occupations of nations … [Read more...]
‘Why Him?’: It’s shallow and gooey, but it will make you laugh
The public’s demand for Yuletide raunch must be insatiable. In a debauched holiday movie season that has already given us Bad Santa 2 and Office Christmas Party, the latest product to emerge from the filth-factory assembly line is Why Him?, a culture-clash comedy set during an eventful Christmas vacation, pitting an early-model, sweater-wearing dad against the gutter-mouthed, … [Read more...]
‘Infiltrator’ brings back 1980s drug war, with a Cranston star turn
Diane Kruger and Bryan Cranston in The Infiltrator. Actors are salesmen pushing the products of their characters, and Bryan Cranston, as the saying goes, could sell snow to Eskimos. Disappearing into his roles like a ghost in a fog, he’s arguably the greatest thespian of his generation, which is to say the greatest confidence man, hooking us into believing there’s no one … [Read more...]