An undeniably charming homage to Hollywood in the late 1920s, The Artist will probably be the most successful silent movie since the days of the Gish sisters. It might also be the first silent film many of its viewers have ever seen. Although many of the technical aspects of the…
Frustratingly opaque, Australian novelist-turned-filmmaker Julia Leigh’s debut feature opens with an unforgettable image: A young woman, earning some extra cash as a medical-research subject, patiently sits as a long tube is threaded down her esophagus. Sharp and precise as its tableau might be, though, Sleeping Beauty never burrows into the…
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec Monfa (1864-1901), better known simply as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, was exactly the kind of person your mother might have warned you to steer clear of: an inbred, aristocratic drunk who frequented cabarets and brothels and died, at age 36, of complications from alcoholism and syphilis…
War Horse finds the silver lining of individual salvation in one of modern history’s darkest thunderclouds: World War I. As the English lad Albert (Jeremy Irvine) bonds with the beloved, half-thoroughbred steed he has named Joey and, once the horse is conscripted by the British army, follows him onto Flanders…
The Adventures of Tintin rolls together plot elements from three comic-book adventures starring Tintin, first introduced in 1929 and one of the all-time most iconographic characters in comic art. After stumbling across a mysterious clue in a model ship, Tintin (voiced by Jamie Bell) bands together with the brawling, bibulous…
An arrogant, struggling actor leaves his wife for a sexy, unstable younger woman, which would be a perfectly serviceable starting point for Ibsen or Woody Allen. Yet in adapting her recent play The Scene, Theresa Rebeck can’t find a consistent tone for her material or players. Charlie (Stephen Barker Turner)…
Six years off from feature filmmaking, Cameron Crowe returns with a film he did not write, but one he rewrote, based on the real-life story of Benjamin Mee, a Brit newspaper columnist who picked up from his idyllic new digs in the South of France and went off to rescue…
The kids are out of school for the holiday break and you might as well admit it — the little monsters are absolutely torturing you. So before you start returning their gifts and looking into boarding schools, try engaging your precious progeny in an evening of holiday activities that might…
To love the circus as an adult means you’re into some real kinky shit. It means you enjoy a very strange group ritual that involves chains, whips, beasts, clowns, children, and muscular, scantily clad gymnasts. That’s right, the circus is in town! At the Holiday Circus during Clematis by Night…
Climb into that attic and dig in those mothballs for your ugliest sweater. One that’s an awkward, bright shade of red, covered in sequins and puffy paint will do — but it’s better if you can find one with possibly an ornament or two. Unfortunately, these sweaters are usually itchy…
Non-Christmas celebrants won’t be home Saturday night, and — obviously — they won’t be at midnight mass. Christmas Eve has turned into an exciting occasion for primarily Jewish singles in their 20s and 30s looking for a little bit of romance. But anyone who doesn’t want to eat Christmas cookies…
Christmas? Is it a load of bullshit thinking you must celebrate it? Did we not spend all of December hunting down the right gifts for the right people, humming along to the Christmas tunes, and eating all the holiday cookies? We ate every single baked good placed in front of…
It’s not just anything that gets people all around the world tuning into Jewish TV to bring a three-hour event into their homes — the 32nd annual Chanukah Festival at Gulfstream Park is that special. And we get to enjoy the lighting of Florida’s largest menorah and the 100-car menorah…
When it’s not the high-anxiety adventure of A&E’s Storage Wars, it’s the Thelma and Louise salvage fest of Lifetime’s Picker Sisters. If we want to revisit the originators, it’s a switch to PBS for Antiques Roadshow. And should we need to curb our collections, an episode of Hoarders keeps us…
Look, just because it’s got “Cirque” in the title doesn’t mean it’s got anything to do with those other guys. “Cirque” ain’t a proper noun, and in this case it (probably) references “Cirque Europeen” — the grand tradition of costume-heavy, makeup-crazy, animal-less circuses that played across Europe for centuries. So…
If Pollyanna is so saccharine it makes you sick but Oliver Twist is too much of a bummer, consider the orphan antics of Annie. The spunky little ginger embodies the optimism of Pollyanna amidst the dark neglect of Oliver’s world and finds a happy medium. Annie sings her way from…
One of the most ambitious exhibitions in recent SoFla memory is now running at the Boca Museum of Art (501 Plaza Real, Boca). It’s called “American Treasures,” which doesn’t quite do justice to the thing’s scope. From the press release: “American Treasures, an exhibition featuring thirty-six artworks by renowned American…
Steve McQueen’s first two films both star Michael Fassbender, feature virtually interchangeable titles, and are nearly as grueling to watch as they must have been to make. But where Shame might be nearly as excruciating as 2008’s Hunger, it’s a lot less exalted. In Shame, Fassbender’s 30-something Manhattan office drone…
Riffing on how outlaw Butch Cassidy’s life might have gone had he survived in South America, this modest oater should tickle Western fans. (I assume there are a few of us left.) Blackthorn finds Cassidy (Sam Shepard) still in Bolivia, breeding horses, bedding his Indian housekeeper (Magaly Solier), and making…
Although supplying boy’s adventure thrills on the side, the original Sherlock Holmes stories are remarkable for how they make the process of empirical brainwork and the resulting discoveries breathlessly exciting. Each Holmes tale simultaneously unlocks a mystery while deepening the enigma of its hero in a miraculously sustained piece of…
Described as a “psychotic prom-queen bitch,” the anti-heroine of Young Adult, directed by Jason Reitman from a Diablo Cody screenplay, is a prize part for Charlize Theron. She plays Mavis, a 37-year-old writer of high school romance fiction, as well as a divorcée, an alcoholic, and a slovenly, spiteful, self-absorbed…
For 15 years and now four sequels, Tom Cruise has pilgrimaged regularly to the Mission: Impossible franchise. Like a Hindu’s rejuvenating bath in the Ganges, a dip in the series serves to wash away perceived doubts about the star’s enduring fame and clout. The sustained box office of the Mission:…
