Always an eagle-eyed portraitist of contemporary Italy and its socioeconomic peccadilloes, Gianni Amelio hasn’t had a film released here in over fifteen years, and this strange, gentle, whimsically formulated concoction may give us a clue as to why. Ostensibly a kind of Candide-like tragicomedy, the movie’s as difficult to figure…
As a middle-aged woman, I rarely have a conversation with other middle-aged women in which the subject of movies “for us” fails to come up. As a critic, I don’t really think of movies in terms of which ones are “for” me and which are not, but I know what…
Poltergeist 2015 is to Poltergeist ’82 what today’s shipped-frozen-to-the-store Pizza Hut dough is to the kneaded-on-site pies the chain’s stoned cooks tossed in the Reagan era. It’s the same kind of thing, with the same shape and some shared ingredients, but the texture’s gone limp, and there’s no sense of…
During “Compliments,” a first-season sketch on Inside Amy Schumer, a group of female friends respond to every bit of praise with a verbal self-maiming: “I tried to look like Kate Hudson but ended up looking like a golden retriever’s dingleberry,” says one. Sighs another, “Of course I see everyone when…
The final episode of Mad Men was upbeat — if you enjoy the death of the counter-culture. On this special episode of the Voice Film Club podcast, Village Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl and editorial fellow Lara Zarum, along with the Voice’s TV critic Inkoo Kang, discuss the final episode…
Imagine a handmade sock puppet headed on a journey where it recounts a story about… anything you want it to. Or think of a gray shaggy-dog puppet interviewing your local barista amid sci-fi sound effects and dancing animated mythical characters, asking tough questions like “Where did you get those pants?”…
Fictional movies that tackle topical subjects often have about them the fusty air of a civics lesson, as if we’re supposed to watch while pretending we’re not being led down the path of righteousness. But writer-director Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill is something else; it’s immediate and vital, and it doesn’t…
In a junk-food summer, Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland is a defiant carrot stick, a blockbuster adventure flick where the message is “Think smart.” It’s a deliberate phooey to the kiddie carnage of movies like Transformers and The Avengers, which frighten children about the apocalypse before they can even spell the word…
In the decadent 21st Century, the summer movie season now sprawls from March through December. (Star Wars: Episode VII is due to awaken the Force December 18; every prior Star Wars picture has come out Memorial Day weekend.) But I’ll stick to tradition and call Memorial Day the start of…
Some people complain about sequels to beloved movies, while others welcome the possibility that a part deux might be even better than the first. Sometimes that happens: While The Godfather is great, The Godfather: Part II expands on its dramatic intensity without repeating any of the same tricks, and The…
This doesn’t feel like a film that exists. How is George Miller’s bonkers, exhausting, no-future smash-’em-up Mad Max: Fury Road not one of those almost-was boondoggles mourned and dreamed of by fans, a revered director’s impossible vision that, thanks to the unstout hearts of studio bean counters, never actually vaulted…
A trip to the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Mizner Park this spring and summer can yield an education in contemporary art and, surprisingly, cast a spell of maniacal and slapstick weirdness thanks to the museum’s current exhibitions. Most intriguing is the video showcase “Shannon Plumb: What a Character,”…
Blues legend Bessie Smith was arguably America’s most powerful black woman during her heyday in the Twenties and Thirties. Her reign wasn’t just based on being the highest-paid African-American entertainer of her generation, but, according to the new HBO movie Bessie, on the freedoms she allowed herself after breaking with…
CANNES, France — “Je m’appelle Max.” Now that’s an opening line, so much better in French, and it’s just one reason I’m glad I waited to see Mad Max: Fury Road here in Cannes on the morning of the festival’s second day, Thursday, rather than at home in the States…
One of the most inspired ideas in late-middle Woody Allen pictures comes in Deconstructing Harry, a movie about how Allen loves Bergman, hates Philip Roth, and isn’t quite clear on what “deconstruction” means. Allen stages passages from fiction written by the protagonist, a novelist named Harry; one features Robin Williams…
The Florida Grand Opera’s (FGO) 2014-15 season comes to a close with a production of Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Consul, a modern opera in three acts. First performed in 1950, Menotti’s first full-length opera is a study on the causalities of political dissidence upon a family. Leading the drama is…
“I’m over people who think they’re funnier than the movie,” says LA Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson, in the wake of her recent piece, “Stop Laughing At Old Movies, You $@%&ing Hipsters.” Joining her — *in the same room, for the first time ever on the podcast* — as usual…
S ofía Vergara is built like an amphora, a living testament to the form ceramicists throughout the centuries have adored. In the fleet and gloriously ridiculous comedy Hot Pursuit, Vergara plays Daniella Riva, a mobster’s wife who needs to be escorted from San Antonio to Dallas, where she’ll testify against…
It’s probably unethical to recommend that attendees to Outre Theatre Company’s Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson smoke a bowl before showing up. But perhaps, when under the influence of something, this scatterbrained anachronism of a rock musical might just cohere. At least for the sober-minded, the show is something of a…
One of Kristen Wiig’s finest moments as a movie star is a throwaway bit of shamed, silent, morning-after comedy: Her Bridesmaids character is skulking out of the home of a cad played by Jon Hamm. She’s playing it cool, swallowing the humiliation of her bad choices, trying to show him…
Iris Apfel isn’t exactly a household name, unless we’re talking about very stylish households. From 1950 to 1992, Apfel ran Old World Weavers, the business she cofounded with her husband, Carl, which faithfully re-created antique textiles for use in home decorating. From grand Park Avenue drapes to demure White House…
Diane Keaton thinks her new film is delightfully ironic. Richard Loncraine’s 5 Flights Up is the latest in that burgeoning genre, Retiree Real Estate Romantic Comedy, where cool, gray-haired New Yorkers realize they can barely afford to live in the city where they fell in love. Keaton plays a teacher…
