MORE STORIES

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  Evil Dead (R)

  When The Evil Dead invaded movie theaters in 1983, it detonated an atomic bomb on a stale horror-film genre overrun by masked killers and teen slashers. Made on a tiny budget, sporting Stephen King’s personal seal of approval and released unrated for its violence, the movie launched the careers of actor Bruce Campbell (Burn Notice), director Sam Raimi (Spider-Man) and producer Robert G. Tapert (TV’s Spartacus: War of the Damned). Watching it in a theater was a riotous experience: The audience screamed and laughed and gasped in shock at the situations these unknown filmmakers had conjured up, making Freddy and Jason and Michael seem like schoolyard wimps.
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  movies

  ‘Evil Dead’ returns to scare a new generation

  Original director Sam Raimi and producer Bruce Campbell took a hands-on approach to the remake, directed by Fede Alvarez.
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  SPRING BREAKERS (R)

  Spring Breakers (R)

  “Spring break forever!” is the mantra constantly spouted by Alien (James Franco), a drug-dealing thug whose goal in life is to be bad, always do the wrong thing and make money. Alien sports grill in his mouth, his hair dangles in ugly cornrows and his body is covered with tattoos (including a giant dollar sign on his neck). Above his bed hangs an arsenal of shotguns, pistols, swords and nunchuks. He keeps Scarface playing on a perpetual loop on his TV. And when he sees four college girls (Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine) being sent to jail after getting arrested in a raid, he pays their bail and takes them under his evil wings. He becomes their Svengali figure — a Peter Pan for these lost girls overcome by the craziness of St. Petersburg during spring break. Some of them won’t be able to keep up with him, though.
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  ‘Spring Breakers’ is a hallucinatory head trip

  Director Harmony Korine and actor James Franco explore the dark side of hedonism.
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  OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL (PG)

  Oz the Great and Powerful (PG)

  Oz the Great and Powerful is an oppressive, bloated bore, the latest argument that CGI kills the imaginations of talented filmmakers. George Lucas fell prey to it with the Star Wars prequels. Tim Burton’s best movie remains 1994’s Ed Wood, which was ironically about a filmmaker who made cheap, lo-fi movies. Michael Bay’s pictures keep getting worse. James Cameron has become so obsessed with the technology that he’s apparently going to spend the rest of his career making Avatar sequels. Steven Spielberg was seduced with Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, but he learned his lesson quickly (most of War Horse, which would have been easier to make using special effects, was shot largely without CGI).
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  OSCAR BALLOT

  Here is the complete list of nominees for the 85th Academy Awards. Herald movie critic Rene Rodriguez’s predictions are in red.
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  Movies

  Rundown of this year's Oscar nominees

  Academy Award nominees usually make for a stale bunch, but things are different this year
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  A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD (R)

  A Good Day to Die Hard (R)

  Early on in A Good Day to Die Hard comes a prolonged car/truck chase through the clogged streets of Moscow that contains some of the most impressive stunt driving I’ve ever seen in a movie. As far as I could tell, director John Moore (Max Payne, The Omen) used little to no CGI in the entire sequence. Those are real 18-wheelers and tankers and dump trucks smashing into each other, and the tactile feel of the scene, which goes on for at least 15 minutes, gets the movie off to a super-fun start. It’s an orgy of Hollywood bombast and destruction at its most wanton.
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  SIDE EFFECTS (R)

  Side Effects (R)

  The main thing to keep in mind while watching Steven Soderbergh’s thriller Side Effects is not to take the movie too seriously or else you’ll feel betrayed by the end. The movie, written by Soderbergh’s frequent collaborator Scott Z. Burns (The Informant!), is much more Magic Mike than Contagion — the filmmakers are above all else having fun here — although the backdrop of psychiatrists, pharmaceutical companies and the potential side effects of new-to-market prescription meds ground the story in a serious reality that initially feels like an exposé.
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  Steven Soderbergh’s new thriller ‘Side Effects’ plays head games

  The director’s latest film is a playful puzzle - with a body count
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  BULLET TO THE HEAD (R)

  Bullet to the Head (R)

  The difference between Bullet to the Head and practically every other action picture you’ve seen in the last year can be summed up in two words: Walter Hill. The director, who hasn’t made a movie since the 2002 flop Undisputed, has lost none of his facility for effective (but never gratuitous or excessive) violence, for his understanding of the male-macho psyche and for his keen interest in what happens when men from different backgrounds and opposing world views are forced to work together reluctantly in order to bring down a common foe.
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  STAND-UP GUYS (R)

  Stand-Up Guys (R)

  In their youth, Val (Al Pacino), Doc (Christopher Walken) and Hirsch (Alan Arkin) were master thieves and con artists, loyal foot soldiers for a fearsome gangster. Today, though, things are different. Doc spends his days painting sunsets in his cramped apartment. Hirsch is tucked away inside a retirement home connected to an oxygen tank for his emphysema. And Val is just getting out of prison after a 28-year sentence, having taken a hit for the team after a job went wrong.
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  Miami International Film Festival unveils the 2013 lineup

  Miami Dade College is blowing out the doors for the 30th anniversary of the Miami International Film Festival, running March 1-10. The school, which presents the annual event, has lined up a whopping 117 feature-length and 12 short films from 41 countries, one of the largest slates in the festival’s history.
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  AMOUR (PG-13)

  Amour (PG-13)

  At the start of Michael Haneke’s rigorous, heart-rending Amour, Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) are in their 80s but still vital and connected and in love. They are cultured and erudite — they’re retired music teachers — and their minds remain sharp and clear. They attend a piano recital by one of their former students, then come home and engage in the sort of comfortable small talk that is the privilege of people who have spent their entire lives together and haven’t grown tired of each other. “Did I mention you looked very pretty tonight?” Georges asks Anne. Over breakfast, he tells her a story from his youth she had never heard before: They’re still discovering each other, like young lovers, all these years later.
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  movies

  Sylvester Stallone lures director Walter Hill back to work for ‘Bullet to the Head’

  ‘Bullet to the Head’ is Walter Hill’s first film in a decade.
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  ZERO DARK THIRTY (R)

  Zero Dark Thirty (R)

  The ironic thing about Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathryn Bigelow’s gripping, harrowing procedural, is that the movie was originally intended to be about the CIA’s unsuccessful search for Osama bin Laden. Screenwriter Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker) was already deep into his script in May 2011 when the elusive terrorist was shot and killed in a Pakistani compound by U.S. Navy SEALs.
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  Jessica Chastain on the making of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

  Playing a female CIA agent on the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
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  Herald Movie Yearbook 2012

  The best and worst of the year in film.
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  The best movies of 2012

  A great year for film.
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  Movies

  Tarantino talks ‘Django Unchained’

  A violent western set against the backdrop of slavery.

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