After a summer filled with third-rate pulp, Blade arrives with a pedigree that suggests first-rate pulp: characters and situations lifted from Marvel Comics; a screenplay by David S. Goyer, who earlier this year gave us the transcendent pulp masterpiece Dark City; and the presence (as star and producer) of the…
As the lights came up after a screening of the new Neil LaBute movie Your Friends & Neighbors, a colleague next to me growled disapprovingly, “That was a nasty movie.” For LaBute — whose divisive debut film In the Company of Men (1997) is probably the worst date-movie ever made…
Actor Peter Haig embraces his role as Vincent Vincent, the pivotal character in the British farce Natural Causes, as though he were gorging on the theatrical equivalent of Thanksgiving dinner. Making his way through each savory episode, Haig samples multiple comic possibilities, devouring each morsel served up by playwright Eric…
Thursday August 13 As a long-time jazz mecca, New Orleans is steeped in the history of the American musical form. So instead of getting lost in the shuffle of Dixieland and other standard jazz styles, the Crescent City group All That is busy writing the next chapter of jazz history…
Water lily fronds, huddled together on the water’s surface, part with a gentle nudge from Dan Riefler’s canoe during his frequent trips to Blue Cypress Lake. And Spanish moss dangles from the gnarled limbs of the stately cypress trees that border the lake and provide ample shade. “You don’t even…
When Rick Wessel is out gallivanting on his horse in local parks, he’s happy to accommodate strangers who want to take pictures. But he’s not the one shutterbugs shoot; it’s his horse-riding pal, Hollywood Jake. Jake, a fluffy, 18-pound, red Maine Coon cat, accompanies Wessel on trail rides and on…
The timing couldn’t be better for How Stella Got Her Groove Back. The dog days of summer are upon us, and few prospects could be more welcome to asteroid-weary moviegoers than a light romantic-comedy that includes a trip to Jamaica as part of the package. Director Kevin Rodney Sullivan may…
Theresa Connelly’s feature directorial debut, Polish Wedding, is a complete misfire. What is meant to be a somewhat farcical — but also fairy tale-like — midsummer night’s sex comedy instead ends up a tedious, uninvolving affair, burdened with a slim premise, grating characters, and poorly realized humor. The film concerns…
Hollywood is openly neurotic about its hatred of psychotherapy. Witness, most recently, Barbra Streisand’s ridiculous Dr. Susan Lowenstein in The Prince of Tides who aggressively mischaracterizes the entire profession with each flick of her nails. In the theater, however, obnoxious psychotherapists tend to appear when a playwright is trying to…
One of the mysteries of 20th-century art is the remarkable outpouring of creativity that has come from a seemingly unlikely place: Haiti. For nearly half a century, a steady stream of art has flowed from the tiny Caribbean nation, which has a population of roughly six million and takes up…
The first thing you see is the landing lights, three beacons high in the sky. Then, if you’re a pro, you determine what type of plane it is. T-shaped tail? It’s a 727. Two cigar-shaped engines, one under each wing? A 737. Three engines and a fuselage bigger than any…
Thursday August 6 Some of the scenes in the movie Saving Private Ryan are so graphic that the gore of World War II is sending audiences into virtual shell shock. At least that’s what it was called back in the ’40s. Today it’s called “posttraumatic stress disorder” and affects veterans…
Judging by the number of uninspired and derivative films we see these days, creating something truly fresh and imaginative on screen is more difficult than turning a pumpkin into a carriage. But that’s exactly what director Andy Tennant and his marvelous cast and crew do in Ever After, the most…
Objectively speaking, there isn’t all that much to be said about Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss. Written and directed by Tommy O’Haver, this very low budget romantic comedy about gay photographer Billy (Sean P. Hayes) attracted to a model/actor/waiter (Brad Rowe) — whose sexual orientation Billy can’t quite fathom — should…
Nicolas Cage has never seemed more dazzling than he does in Brian De Palma’s new thriller, Snake Eyes. Playing Rick Santoro, a corrupt Atlantic City cop who likes to think he’s “everybody’s friend,” Cage boogies to his own inner beat for almost two continuous hours. It’s like watching a great…
Simpatico may be the funniest play about losers in Sam Shepard’s entire prolific output. Long before we meet them, these characters have lost the loves of their lives, aged without grace, and in some cases suffered devastating reversals of fortune. In the course of the play, some suffer even more…
John Messenger, a big film-buff from England, watches old British science-fiction TV shows differently these days. After moving to Davie nearly a decade ago, he hooked up with a group of South Floridians who share his fondness for low-budget British sci-fi. The group, called TRI, was established in 1985 as…
Watching Ed Aristone on stage rehearsing the role of a smoldering, smirking rapist — one who sings, no less — it’s hard to imagine him in real life. During an evening rehearsal at the tiny EDGE/Theatre in South Beach, he’s one of the cast, a muscular guy in jeans and…
Wearing a polo shirt and khaki shorts, Michael Kennedy doesn’t look like a Deadhead. But the 30-year-old from Pompano Beach is hanging out on a recent Saturday night at Tavern 213 in Fort Lauderdale, right alongside the tie-dyed masses, grooving to the tunes of Grateful Dead cover act Uncle John’s…
Do we really need to see the great Kevin Spacey fuming and fussing in one of those we-do-things-my-way-or-we-don’t-do-them-at-all roles? In The Negotiator he plays Chris Sabian, an expert hostage negotiator for the Chicago police, whose job it is to talk down Samuel L. Jackson’s Danny Roman, another expert police hostage…
Walt Disney Pictures has a smart and highly profitable business strategy: Rerelease the studio’s proven hits every seven years or so, thereby reaching a new generation of kids — and making another tidy bundle of dollars in the process. Well, this time around the Mouse House has decided to remake…
Summer theater is the sort of oxymoron that conjures up farcical epithets such as “dramatic hot dog stand,” to use the term coined by the late George Jean Nathan, the esteemed American theater critic. Or “straw-hat trail,” the term used by others to denote the sartorial choices of the supposed…
