Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘Crimes Against Humanity’

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Boy let me tell you. Film festivals are tricky to program. Well over 100 movies in a ten day span, including both short films and features? That’s a lot of movies. And there really is no way possible for each movie to be a winner. Some of them aren’t going to be so hot, for various reasons. But they’ll have redeeming qualities about them, variables that make them worthwhile in one way, shape or form. Unfortunately I don’t think “Crimes Against Humanity” meets even that criteria.Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘Levitated Mass’

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“Levitated Mass” is a documentary about the conceptualization, actualization and meaning of the Michael Heizer art piece known as Levitated Mass, which is really just a 340-ton boulder suspended over a carved out walkway in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This is a pretty great movie that raises all sorts of questions such as “what does this mean?” and  “what is art?” and “how the hell do you move a 340-ton boulder anyway?” Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘Dom Hemingway’

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“Dom Hemingway” is mostly a showcase of Jude Law, who gets to put on some weight and play an over the top character with a penchant for cussing and long monologues, and while he knocks his portion of the movie pretty much out of the park, the rest of the movie around him is merely good, with some flash and style to go along with a little bit of substance, but ultimately not really saying anything new or unique with the story and characters.Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘The Front Man’

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I don’t know if this is the type of person that we all know or have met before, but I have a feeling it is. I think we can all relate to the universal truth of coming across a person who cares about one thing above all others, and that is the attainment of worldwide fame and adulation, with all the perks and fortune that comes with such popularity. In other words, we all know someone who just wants to be a rock star. The music is secondary. It’s all about the fame.

That’s “The Front Man,” a documentary, getting it’s East Coast premiere, about the lead singer of a New Jersey band called Loaded Poets, a band that has stuck together for decades, playing local establishments and recording material and plugging away at it since 1980, which is a damned long time for a band to be spinning their wheels in the mud (professionally speaking, anyway). And according the to the press notes for this documentary, “The Front Man” covers 27 years in the life of lead singer Jim Wood, and while part of the fun of this movie for me was the realization that it was covering a very large expanse of time in this person’s like, I have to say that it did not seem like we were documenting 27 years worth of this guy’s life. Maybe 27 years when you throw in some old home videos, but this definitely seemed like it documents at least 12 to 15 years of Jim Wood’s existence as a musician and as a average joe who wishes so badly to no longer be average.Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘Strike: The Greatest Bowling Story Ever Told’

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The great thing about documentary short films? You can make one about just about any subject and for even just a few minutes, the most mundane person or subject can be the most interesting thing in the world. For example, for thirteen minutes, I was enthralled by the journey of one man as he goes after one of the hardest things to accomplish in any organized sport – bowling three perfect games in a row.Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘Mission Congo’

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Man, I swear to the heavens and every single deity listening right now, if there ends up being more of an uproar and activist approach to save the damn orcas because of “Blackfish” then there ends up being in the aftermath of “Mission Congo,” then there truly is no justice in this world and we might as well all just give up. SeaWorld may be abusing whales and everyone freaks the fuck out but The 700 Club mastermind and former Presidential candidate Pat Robertson uses money donated for humanitarian purposes to fund his own personal diamond mine and everyone is just as likely to shrug their shoulders and say “oh well what can we do about it?“Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution’

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“Not Anymore:  A Story of Revolution” is a documentary short film that should be seen by everyone, and by everyone I mean people in the Western world and those who really don’t give a place like Syria a second thought because this is the type of experience that really drives home the full impact of what has happened over there and what their current state of living is now. Why is this not on the news regularly? Why are our televisions saturated with faux-reality shows and meaningless drivel? Why are we being encouraged to look away from the horrors happening in the our own world?Continue Reading …

2014 Florida Film Festival preview

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It is that most special time of year, that annual 10-day feast of film and food that is the Florida Film Festival. Always with great programming as well as cool events and parties, the FFF is something I have been looking forward to each year for a while now, and this year’s schedule looks as promising as always.

And who knows, there is a good chance a bunch of these movies will end up on Netflix for instant viewing, as I have seen a NUMBER of films at the FFF, only to see that pop up on Netflix within about a year or so. And they are just about always great movies, whether they be little indie coming of age comedies, documentaries or foreign films, they just have that knack for picking some winners.Continue Reading …

Op-ed: The Avengers Effect, the Franchise Film Arms Race and X-Men

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Looking back, it is kind of funny to remember doubting Marvel Studios and their ability to put together what they refer to as their “cinematic universe” akin to that of their comic book universe, in which characters appear in each other’s story lines all the time and epic mash ups of comic book characters and teams are done on the reg.

But comics books are cheaper to make than blockbuster movies, so their idea of making a string of movies that all fed into each other and would culminate with “The Avengers” seemed like a classic “more than they can chew” type of situation. Just because “Iron Man” was a surprise success doesn’t mean people would actually go see Thor movies. Really, some people were likely laughing to themselves, thinking there was no way this was going to work, creatively or financially.

Jump cut to May 7th, 2012, inside the offices of Marvel and Disney (who had since come on as a financial backer), look behind those closed doors, and you know what you would have seen? Employees all doing back flips and partying and getting down, as “Marvel’s The Avengers” (official title) had a record setting opening weekend of $207 million. That’s just three days of box office. In just one country. To say that Marvel’s plan worked is an understatement. The fans ate it up and came back for seconds. And thirds. And so on. And the critics didn’t hate it. Most of them didn’t anyway.Continue Reading …

Talking Trailers: Godzilla, Guardians of the Galaxy and Transformers 4

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The best part about going to the movies in the months leading up to the summer season? All the trailers for the big summer blockbusters. These are usually movies that are heavy on spectacle and have a lot of visual excitement going for them, which almost always makes for at the very least…a good trailer. But sometimes these trailers promise more than just big blockbuster excitement, and even rarer still is the big movie that delivers on these promises made by marketers and advertisers. But still, a movie trailer is like an unscratched lotto ticket…as long as there is hope, we’re good to go, and it’s worth something. So what are these trailers worth?Continue Reading …