English art star Sam Taylor-Wood’s oddly straightforward biopic about the juvenile John Lennon concludes, as well it should, with the singer’s haunting, incantatory primal scream “Mother.” But instead of tying a bow on the film’s portrait of familial abandonment, Lennon’s guttural, air-cleaving quaver puts everything that precedes it to shame…
A film seemingly designed to get every New York City honors student punched in the face at college, It’s Kind of a Funny Story chronicles a privileged Brooklyn high-schooler’s supercool institutionalized mental-health break. Hot for his best friend’s girlfriend, stressed out over an application to a prestigious summer school, and…
Two words come to mind whenever the Miami Hurricanes and the Florida State Seminoles face each other: “wide right.” Another two words that come to mind could also be,“Dad Gummit.” But mostly, it’s “wide right.” Still, the two phrases have been married to each other since November of 1991, when…
Was there anyone on TV in the ’90s who felt more comfortable as himself than Jon Lovitz? From Friends to Seinfeld, he seemed always to play some grease-spot of a human being; on The Critic, the underappreciated animated vehicle for his overenthusiastic voice talents, he gave heart and wit to…
We all have enough skeletons in our closet to make Halloween decorating a breeze. Maybe they’re of the benign variety, like bedroom dancing in your underwear to your favorite guilty pleasure, or maybe they’re more scandalous in nature, like that questionable one-night stand. No matter where they lay on the…
The NBA has always been about marketing itself to the world, particularly in European and Asian markets. So what better way to showcase the NBA than by having the Miami Heat — led by Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, and Chris Bosh — play one of their teams and beating the…
Clowns are scary enough as it is. But throw some ravenous yellow teeth on them, a deranged bulbous red nose, and a Spanish accent and what you have is positively poltergeistien. If you don’t know of what we speak, you’d be forgiven; the U.S. has never been privy to the…
You’ve seen the movie Beerfest at least 20 times. Each time you watch the drunk-heavy film, you lament the fact that you can’t experience “Das Boot” without actually traveling to Germany. Your friends try to cheer you up with rounds of beer pong but alas your sadness remains. The American…
The south tip of the USA has always been possessed: South Florida greed, South Florida debauchery, the mayhem. The Sunshine State can be dark, horrific, and haunting — and so will be the War Memorial on Friday and Saturday. The Village of Horrors 2010 has gotten inspiration from many dreadful…
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was a revolutionary novel that questioned the human condition and made insightful social commentary on the industrial and scientific revolutions of the early 1800s. Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein does none of those things — but it does have musical numbers. And who doesn’t want to see a…
Please picture an angel in wings, no shirt, translucent white tights. His mouth is full of a ball gag, and he is cuffed at his feet and hands to a vicious wooden chair that looks a little like Old Sparky. He is locked in the bedroom of a tony New…
The medical community probably regards phrenology the same way musicians do Milli Vanilli. For those not familiar, the 19th-century discipline posited, among other things, that human personality is determined by bumps on the skull. Right. But you know what they say: One man’s outdated pseudoscience is another man’s Picasso. Just…
On first appearances alone, it’s hard to imagine any similarities between visual artist Nick Cave and the more widely recognized macabre rocker of the same name than that they share a name. For one, visual artist Nick Cave is courted by Vogue Magazine executives, has a professional dancer’s background, and…
Pop art originated in Britain as a parody of America’s plastic and monstrously extravagant consumer culture. In the early ’60s, Americans made pop art their own, the critique became something more innocent and un-self-conscious in technicolor prints that faithfully transcribed the country’s cornucopia without necessarily commenting on it. Meantime, France…
Paul (Ryan Reynolds), an American truck driver for a KBR-type contractor in Iraq, is captured in an insurgent attack and wakes up buried in a coffin, totally defenseless but for a Zippo, a pencil, a flask, a flashlight, anti-anxiety meds, and someone else’s cell phone. He uses the latter to…
The Social Network is a wonderful title, at once Olympian in its detachment and self-descriptive in its buzz. Everyone will opine (and tweet) on this Scott Rudin-produced, Aaron Sorkin-scripted, David Fincher-directed, universally anticipated tale of Facebook’s genesis and founding genius — at least until something sexier comes along. The main…
Following up his Beijing Olympics opening-ceremony mega-production, Zhang Yimou remakes the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple by dressing it up in flamboyant silk and translating it to Mandarin. The honky-tonk of the Coens’ Southwestern noir becomes a noodle-shop compound on the edge of a Western China painted desert, sometime in the…
Modish blankness tries to pass for clarity in Let Me In, Cloverfield director Matt Reeves’ Americanized remake of the Swedish boutique hit Let the Right One In. Reeves faithfully adopts the international-style flatness of Tomas Alfredson’s film, a mixture of “philosophical” long shots, brittle scoring, spartan cutting, and slowed-pulse performances…
“Monsters Under My Bed: Childhood Fears Group Art Mega-Show” October 2 — November 13 at the Bear and Bird Boutique + Gallery, upstairs at Tate’s Comics, 4566 N. University Drive, Lauderhill. Call 954-748-0181, or visit tatescomics.com/bearandbird. Tate’s Comics has a slick art gallery upstairs, Bird + Bear, where the young…
How’s the view from your office? Pretty boring, huh? Probably nothing like what Clyde Butcher sees on an average day at his office. That’s because his window is a camera lens. While most of us are treated to a view of the company parking lot, Butcher’s out gazing at snow-capped…
It was a wild summer for Miami Heat fans — one filled with irrational fear (Oh no! Dwyane Wade is going to Chicago and we’ll be left with Carlos Arroyo as our best player!), tempered enthusiasm (No way LeBron decides to come here! That’s a laughable pipe dream!), joy (D-Wade…
The NFL’s famous tendency toward parity hinges on several factors — the salary cap, a scheduling office that forces the best teams to play one another — and not least is the swift and ugly decline that age brings. In Week 2, Miami made the Minnesota Vikings look every bit…
