You would never know it from what the multiplexes were showing in the first 10 months of 2017, but with a November and December delivering a flurry of quality films, this became a top-notch year at the movies. Here are my 10 favorites, with plenty more just barely not making the cut. 1. The Shape of Water – Tapping into the magic realism and political fantasy that fueled his … [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...]