As an honorable mention, we'd like to highlight that several filmmakers have been creating features that showcase a new vision of South Florida, among them works like Monica Sorelle's Mountains, Hansel Porras Garcia's Febrero, Edson Jean's Ludi, and Chris Molina's Fallen Fruit. This is to say nothing of South Florida filmmakers like Jonathan Cuartas, Kareem Tabsch, and Keisha Rae Witherspoon, all of whom are bringing their own distinctive cinema to the world. The list could go on and on, with so many talents — budding and experienced, making shorts and features — to be discovered in the city, representing a new vanguard of cinema, even in the face of a city that so often seems designed to destroy the artists who live here.
Any and every list is just a reflection of the moment it was made and the people who made it, so remember that if you're getting upset over your favorite movie not being on here. We probably like it too (or maybe we don't) — but hey, make your own list if you're salty about it.
Without further ado, here are our top ten South Floridian films.
The Birdcage
A nearly perfect queer comedy, The Birdcage offers a glimpse into Miami that's as familiar as it is special. Though it is ultimately one of many movies about gay acceptance from the '90s whose politics may be considered "dated" by some, it rises far above that thanks to the strength of its cast — especially Nathan Lane and Robin Williams constantly playing with the concept of masculinity and femininity in a film all about what it means to "perform," be it for an audience, your family, or even yourself, and the brilliant writing of Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Though the comedy duo has an immense career under their belts — Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Graduate, Working Girl for Nichols and A New Leaf, Mikey and Nicky, Ishtar, and The Heartbreak Kid (which, coincidentally, is also a Miami Beach-based comedy) for May — it's The Birdcage that keeps us coming back again and again.
Body Heat
There is always a sinking suspicion that a one-night stand in South Florida could lead to murder. That sensation is due to Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat. When the live wires of a shady lawyer (William Hurt) and a wannabe widow (Kathleen Turner in her screen debut) cross, an electric energy is released into the world. An unofficial remake of Billy Wilder's quintessential noir Double Indemnity, Kasdan transports the film from Los Angeles to South Florida. The new setting gives the classic story a new spin. From the suffocating heat to the uncontrollable sweat, Body Heat captures South Florida perfectly. As a steamy affair between the two turns into a series of double-crosses, Body Heat unlocks fears and fantasies. Filmed in and around Palm Beach, Lake Worth, and Hollywood, Florida, the setting becomes the film's most enduring character.
Miami Rhapsody
Miami Rhapsody is often overwhelmed with comparisons to the work of Woody Allen, which is admittedly not unwarranted. Anyone unable or unwilling to look past the commonalities is missing a delightfully modern romantic comedy, a relic of the neurotic Nineties. The narrative unfolds as a 90-minute stream of conscious delivery to the main character's gynecologist. David Frankel's debut feature is a time capsule of Miami in the mid-'90s, featuring Sarah Jessica Parker, Mia Farrow, Antonio Banderas, and a brief role for Naomi Campbell. The recent engagement of Gwyn (Parker) has her interrogating her romantic relationship and the unstable relationships of her entire family, including her parents. What unfolds is a clever meditation on the possibility of everlasting love and fidelity in the modern world. An advertising executive slash aspiring screenwriter, Gwyn is full of quippy one-liners and sardonic, self-deprecating humor. (If only more of Allen's female characters were written with this level of wit and crippling self-awareness.) Visually, the film portrays a refreshing casualness of '90s Miami as characters stroll the Shops at Bal Harbour, dance at a Vizcaya wedding, or fail to consummate a rendezvous at the Sinbad Motel in MiMo. Perhaps its greatest impact is how clearly this film serves as the blueprint for Carrie Bradshaw and Sex and the City, which arrived only three years later and captured the zeitgeist of changing sexual mores in the culture.
Miami Vice
A certain era of television viewer had the pleasure of experiencing the hit series Miami Vice as it aired, with its sprawling view of actual South Florida locations — including the one and only Mac's Club Deuce — gorgeous visuals, and a whole lot of fun plotting for Crockett and Tubbs. However, when it comes to Michael Mann's unfairly maligned feature adaptation of the series, what we got was something completely different. It throws you down into Mansion, as the Linkin Park and Jay-Z mash-up "Numb/Encore" plays, and allows you to ride along as these detectives do what they do best — even if that ends up feeling like their own personal purgatory. So much is left unspoken in Mann's picture, instead focusing on the almost ugly, often ethereal, beauty of Miami (shot digitally!) and replacing the typical bombastic action one might expect (à la Bad Boys, Pain & Gain, etc.) with pure atmosphere and thrilling vibes.
Moonlight
Miami movies tend to be bright and brash. Moonlight, by Miami natives Tarell Alvin McCraney and Barry Jenkins, reflects on the city's sense of poetic longing. Told as a time-spanning tryptic of one person's life from boy to adolescent to man, Moonlight captures a character and a city. An exploration of Blackness, queerness, abuse, repression, rebirth, and all their interconnection, the film is an unforgettable experience that shifts a spotlight on South Florida. Married to its inventive narrative structure are unforgettable images of neon-coated skin and moonlit beaches. Evoking master filmmakers like Wong Kar Wai and Claire Denis, Jenkins creates visual poetry out of the city's landscape from the metro mover to Jimmy's Eastside Diner in MiMo. The filmmakers fought to film in South Florida, specifically Liberty City, despite the state's lack of tax incentives, which is currently being corrected. Their decision gives the film an undeniably authentic texture, and these images are now burnt into the cultural imagination and cinematic history.
Nude on the Moon
Doris Wishman is a Miami staple that not nearly enough folks have heard about, spending many of her later years literally working in a sex shop in Coral Gables, where she even shot part of one of her latest features, Dildo Heaven. This is, in part, because our city loves to ignore anyone who worked in the business of exploring sex and sexuality, lest we forget how much Miami pretends we never had porn theaters and that the seminal porn feature Deep Throat was filmed in Miami-Dade. And though one of her earliest works, Nude on the Moon, implies that we'll be in outer space, the feature was actually made down here and filmed at the gorgeous Homestead gem that is Coral Castle. It's an immensely goofy, often nonsensical motion picture, but it's the kind of kitschy treasure highlighting how creative filmmakers used to be and what you could do with the neatest underseen spaces in South Florida.
River of Grass
Kelly Reichardt may have disowned her history in South Florida at this point, choosing to rarely, if ever, speak on it and referring to it as a "cultural desert," but that's precisely why her film River of Grass needs to be on this list. It's a film that captures a side of Miami and Broward so sparsely shown, that of the individuals stuck here, stuck in lives that they barely want to live, desperate for something new. For all the growth within South Florida, with buildings overtaking every corner, River of Grass emphasizes exactly what Reichardt has always known about this city: It is a cultural desert, constantly pretending to be more exciting and important than it really is. Reichardt's film is free of all the expectations of glamour and excess that Miami promises, instead fixating on the emptiness that exists here, despite there always being other people just like you, going through the motions and hoping to do more than sit and wait in the traffic on I-95 for the humidity to overtake you.
Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Some Like It Hot
Few films in the history of cinema can claim to be as memorable and eternally entertaining as Some Like It Hot. Sure, the feature was technically shot in California, but what better speaks to the South Floridian spirit than a couple of grifters trying to pass in a city full of fools? Miami has always been the definition of camp, and any film that takes place here should follow suit. With its cross-dressing musicians played by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, Joe E. Brown's creepy (but ultimately all-accepting) sugar daddy, and Marilyn Monroe in a role that's as playful as it is sincere, Some Like It Hot offers the best of the "idea" of Miami. Sure, it's a world of criminals and liars, but there's a whole lot of fun to be found in that, isn't there?
True Lies
Two Miami-set action films battled at the box office in 1994: The Specialist and True Lies. While the former is barely remembered, beyond a steamy sex scene between Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone in a literal steam room and Gloria Estefan's ear-worm cover of "Turn the Beat Around," the latter, True Lies, is canon. The success of director James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day gave the filmmaker a blank check to make his next film, and he cashed it in for the first 100-plus-million-dollar budget in Hollywood history. Combining the star power of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, a post-Wayne's World Tia Carrere, and, of all people, Tom Arnold with an intoxicating blend of action, comedy, and marital commentary, True Lies became a commercial and critical smash success. There are so many memorable set pieces, including the tango, the horse chase, and the hotel striptease, but it's the South Florida elements that stand out. The film's climax uses the Florida Keys and Miami as the perfect backdrop. The astounding limo fight scene and Seven Mile Bridge explosion are almost immediately followed by a heart-stopping sequence set on a construction crane amidst downtown Miami skyscrapers. Three decades later, True Lies still has that je ne sais quoi missing from contemporary blockbusters.
Matt Dillon (center) and Denise Richards (right) in Wild Things
Photo by Columbia Pictures/Getty Images
