Papa: Hemingway in Cuba, a memoiristic drama about Ernest Hemingway’s paranoid twilight in Havana and the Miami Globe reporter he “adopts” into his entourage, holds a significant distinction: It’s the first Hollywood film to shoot on location in Cuba since the 1959 revolution, an achievement reached over a decade of legal wrangling. It’s a shame that it was all in vain. The … [Read more...]
The View From Home 75: De Santis’ neorealism, Fonda and Hitch, Wim and Bruno, and Stoppard directs
Silvia Magnano in Bitter Rice. (1949) Bitter Rice: A tragedy on tenterhooks, Giuseppe De Santis’ Bitter Rice (Criterion, $22.99 Blu-ray, $17.99 DVD) is a slippery fusion of docu-naturalism and noir expressionism. And with its first proper Region 1 release now widely available, it should earn its rightful place in the feminist film pantheon. Released in 1949, Bitter Rice is … [Read more...]
Jewish film, poetry festivals return for another year
Next week brings two favorite cultural festivals back to Palm Beach County — the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, now in its 12th year, and the Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival, which is in its 26th year. Each brings its own perspective and interpretation to two different but similar art forms — contemporary poets and their oeuvre and contemporary filmmakers and … [Read more...]
‘Youth’: It may not mean much, but it’s beautiful to look at
There is virtually no story in Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth, and it hardly matters. Cinematic visions this grandiose and immaculately composed don’t come but once a year, and Sorrentino is usually the one to deliver them. Sorrentino established his legacy as the heir to sumptuous late-period Fellini with the 2013 Oscar winner The Great Beauty. That movie’s depiction of wealthy … [Read more...]
Once a film flop, ‘Newsies’ reborn as Broadway sensation
When the 1992 Disney movie musical Newsies tanked at the box office, few expected the title to ever resurface in any form. But this real-life David vs. Goliath tale of exploited young newsboys who fought back against the rich, ruthless New York City publishers with the 1899 newspaper strike would not be silenced. “It was becoming the number-one requested title to Disney from … [Read more...]
Film celebrates a philanthropist who changed black education
Julius Rosenwald. Do not feel bad if you cannot identify the name. Filmmaker Aviva Kempner, who focuses on the Chicago retail mogul and philanthropist who donated over $62 million to benefit African-Americans throughout the South, estimates that eight out of 10 people who see Rosenwald know little about the man who is its subject. “I think it’s the most inspiring story of … [Read more...]
‘The Martian’: Breezy chronicle of the can-do spirit
Mars is hot right now. For mega-rich space cowboys like Elon Musk and Bas Lansdorp, the fourth rock from the sun is their next frontier, their Xanadu, their far-flung solution to climate change. But the founders of SpaceX and Mars One are not alone: Thousands have already applied for private space missions some 20 or 30 years down the line, even if it means never returning to … [Read more...]
‘No Escape’: Not-so-innocents abroad in manipulative dreck
I’m disgusted to report this, because it tends to give the film some visceral credit, but there are scenes in No Escape that made me squirm like few other films in recent memory. Director John Erick Dowdle films his story of a family under siege in Southeast Asia with the kind of gut-wrenching, intestine-squeezing terror more often associated with underground horror flicks. It … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 25-26
Theater: J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is one of the best known, most enduring stories ever written. So much so that there are numerous adaptations — like Peter and the Starcatcher, Finding Neverland and the soon-to-be-released movie Pan — that draw on our collective awareness of the boy who never grew up. Tonight, the Maltz Jupiter Theatre presents Peter Pan Jr., a live stage … [Read more...]
PB Film Fest’s new home opens with four-film cancer benefit
With new management and a new year-round home, the 20-year-old Palm Beach International Film Festival is turning over a new leaf. Broadway producer Jeff Davis (Rock of Ages) took over the reins of the festival in February, serving as its president and CEO. This weekend, beginning tonight, he opens The Palm Beaches Theatre — the 240-seat Manalapan playhouse and screening room … [Read more...]