Michael Mann's "Miami Vice" 10 Years Later

Please welcome back new contributor Bill Curran for a 10th anniversary look at Miami Vice

The major studio head-scratcher of its year, the ultimate distillation of Michael Mann’s brand of clean sheen noir, and the most authentically auteurist film of the aughts, Miami Vice was the movie offspring of a successful and ever-parodied 80s TV series that was nothing like the original. Instead, Mann unleashed a brooding and voluptuously pixilated peacock of a crime thriller upon an unsuspecting public

If only every recent remake had as much reckless spirit as this one did when it opened nationally ten years ago today. Though the film received favorable notices from top print critics, including a rave from A.O. Scott, the majority of reviewers (and almost all audiences) were simply confused...

Click to read more ...

Actresses We Love & the Festivals They Are Going To

Murtada here. It’s the week of fall film festivals announcements. We just heard that The Bening is going to New York. Lupita Nyong'o and Rosamund Pike are going to both London and Toronto. Let’s check in with a few others who are going to Venice, Toronto and possibly Telluride (Telluride doesn’t announce its program until its first day but if a film is announced as a Canadian Premiere at TIFF, and it hasn’t appeared at Sundance, it’s assumed to be Telluride bound).

Sally, Dakota, Rooney and more after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Have you seen "Sing Street" yet?

It's out on DVD and BluRay now so you have no excuses left. Here's a lovely endorsement for one of the year's best movies, from actor Darren Criss (Glee), who knows from finding your musical voice.

Now that it’s back in the theater, I would like to officially endorse my love for @singstreetmovie. Was obsessed with this film at Sundance. Can’t understand how it didn’t make a bigger splash. To me, it’s up there with all the classic band movie greats. Can’t wait for people to hear the original songs at the Oscars- all tunes I so desperately wish I wrote. Never seen a movie that has better portrayed that journey of musical adolescence- of what it’s like to search for and find your voice through music. This one’s especially for all band-obsessed siblings, growing up listening to records in their basement @CharlesCriss. Go see it now and buy the soundtrack and dance around your room like I am right now. Drive It Like You Stole It!

A photo posted by Darren Criss (@darrencriss) on Jul 14, 2016 at 8:07am PDT

New York Film Festival Selects Mike Mills' 20th Century Women for Centerpiece Film

Sound the alarms: there's a fresh new reason to celebrate Annette Bening. Following in the footsteps of last year's selection of Steve Jobs, the New York Film Festival has chosen Mike Mills' 20th Century Women as its 2016 Centerpiece, which stars The Bening as a single mother raising her son in 1979 Santa Barbara, co-habiting with a Bowie-cut Greta Gerwig, nomadic carpenter Billy Crudup, and frequent house guest Elle Fanning. We've been anxiously awaiting Mills' follow up to the intimate, structurally adventurous tone poem that is Beginners for a few years now, and NYFF's programming pick (and description of the film as a vibrantly alive time capsule, plus taste-maker A24's acquisition) signals a strong indication that it's been worth the wait. Imagining The Bening caught at the crux of cultural, decade-splitting identities, and strapped into denim overalls to boot, would be enough reason to anticipate the film, but the thought of another story stripped from the personal headlines of Mills' own life and translated into pure cinema has us downright salivating. I can smell the burnt sage from here.

Dystopia/Utopia. Complete the Sentence.

Given what's going on in the world, at home and abroad, and the constant tough struggle we have before us to choose love and optimism, let's talk Utopias and Dystopias. It's the subject, in a way, of two current movies: Captain Fantastic and Star Trek Beyond. But dystopias are plentiful in cinema. So, let's complete the sentence...

My favorite movie dystopia is __________ but I hope this world turns out more like the utopia imagined in __________.