Unsung Heroes

Between 1914 and 1918, a million horses were sent overseas to help with the war effort. As they carried rations and ammunition to the front line and brought the wounded back on stretchers, they were caught in mustard gas attacks and barbed wire and left to die in no man’s…

Steve’s Charity Pizza Challenge

It’s a battle royal that pits three local charities against one another for the chance to receive a percentage of the pie. Pizza pies, that is. On Tuesday, May 21, at 6 p.m. at Steve’s Wood Fired Pizza, the Tri-County Humane Society, the Pap Corps, and Catherine’s Hope for a…

Art that Sustains You

Local art bazaars and outdoor market-style festivals are always a good time, but every once in a while, you need a real cultural turbo boost. And while your friend selling spray-painted vinyl for $10 at your Saturday-night hangout seems artsy enough, it might just be the perfect time to step…

Shining a Light on the Sunshine State’s Best

The week marks the 62nd-annual edition of the Boca Museum of Art’s illustrious All Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition. The oldest statewide annual juried competition, this exhibition displays artwork from the upper echelon of Florida’s independent art world. Featuring 149 works by Florida’s top emerging artists, the All Florida Juried…

Mud Movie Review: McConaughey Is Great Again

Has anyone ever been so perfectly cast as Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused? Sculpted entirely of charisma and cheekbones yet still seedier than a stash of gym-locker pot, McConaughey’s radiant stoner exemplified high school promise gone bad. he looked like the little man of top of trophies, just horny,…

No Place on Earth Movie Review

Part The Diary of Anne Frank, part The Swiss Family Robinson, and part The Shawshank Redemption, No Place on Earth, about a Ukrainian Jewish family in WWII who hides from the Nazis by living in caves, has all the elements of a great story: an epic quest (survival), formidable obstacles…

Love Sick Love Movie Review

When a film mashes up two seemingly unlike genres, we’re too quick to praise the hybridization as a “fresh twist” or subversion of formula, even if those disparate elements aren’t engaging each other thematically or aesthetically. (For instance, has anyone married zombie horror with comedy as flavorfully as Shaun of…

Tom Cruise Can Still Be Great — Why Aren’t His Movies?

Though he’s long been among the most recognizable celebrities in the world, Tom Cruise has always seemed vaguely irritating, like the popular kid at school everybody secretly dislikes. His is an odd sort of fame: globally recognized but rarely acclaimed, he remains more reliably bankable than nearly any other actor…

Watching The Client List With a Real Sex Worker

In The Client List, Lifetime’s pseudo-steamy take on the world of sensual massage, Jennifer Love Hewitt plays a struggling housewife who takes a rub-down side job in order to support her kids after her husband disappears. The show, which jumps from scenes of Hewitt pleasuring executives to her dancing with…

The Devil’s Auteur: Rob Zombie Faces His Fans — and His Art

After working a packed auditorium into a frenzy at last September’s premiere of Lords of Salem at the Toronto International Film Festival, Rob Zombie anxiously took his seat and watched his audience watch his film, his first independently financed feature. It’s also the first film he’s made following a messy…

The Lords of Salem Is Never Suspenseful or Scary

After two Halloween remakes, rock star turned filmmaker Rob Zombie has penned a somber, surprisingly tame tale of witchcraft and possession that may trigger unintended giggles among even his most devoted admirers. Sheri Moon Zombie, the director’s wife, stars as Heidi Hawthorne, a Salem, Massachusetts radio DJ who begins hearing…

Scary Movie V Will Murder Your Capacity to Feel Joy

Picking up seven years after the previous installment, Scary Movie V features no original cast members, no Wayans brothers producing (they bailed after No. 3), and a new director (first-timer Malcolm D. Lee). It’s still terrible. For an alleged comedy, it’s remarkably laugh-free; as insta-parody, it already feels dated (Inception…

Sundance Channel’s Rectify Takes a Mighty Swing at Greatness

At any prior point in TV history, Rectify, a six-part drama on the Sundance channel, would be a shake-up-the-medium astonishment: A sober, even stately investigation into a curious kind of afterlife, that of a death-row inmate given freedom twenty years after his conviction. For all the finely crafted mysteries of…