''The Last Resort'' is a documentary film about

Miami Beach Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County, Florida. It was incorporated on March 26, 1915. The municipality is located on natural and man-made barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the latter of which sep ...

directed by Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch. It features photographs taken between 1976 and 1986 by photographers Andy Sweet and Gary Monroe. The film focuses on the transformation of

South Beach South Beach, also nicknamed colloquially as SoBe, is a neighborhood in Miami Beach, Florida. It is located east of Miami between Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The area encompasses Miami Beach south of Dade Boulevard. This area was the fi ...

between the 1960s and 1980s. In the 1960s South Beach was an inexpensive retirement community, populated largely by working and lower middle class Jewish retirees. By the early 1980s the housing was deteriorating, and, in the wake of the

Mariel boatlift The Mariel boatlift () was a mass emigration of Cubans who traveled from Cuba's Mariel Harbor to the United States between 15 April and 31 October 1980. The term "" (plural "Marielitos") is used to refer to these refugees in both Spanish and En ...

and the

Miami Drug War The Miami drug war was a series of armed conflicts in the 1970s and 1980s, centered in the Florida city of Miami, between the United States government and multiple drug cartels, primarily the Medellín Cartel. It was predominantly fueled by the il ...

South Beach became a dangerous neighborhood. Context and commentary are provided by interviews with Susan Gladstone, Director of the

Jewish Museum of Florida The Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU is located in two restored historic buildings that were formerly synagogues, at 301 & 311 Washington Ave., in Miami Beach, Florida. The main museum building, at 301 Washington Ave., was built in 1936, is on the Na ...

, filmmaker

Kelly Reichardt Kelly Reichardt (; born March 3, 1964) is an American film director and screenwriter. She is known for her minimalist films closely associated with slow cinema, many of which deal with working-class characters in small, rural communities. Reich ...

, who grew up in South Beach, and

Edna Buchanan Edna Buchanan (née Rydzik, born March 16, 1939)About Edna Buchanan
Fantastic Fiction. Retri ...

, a crime novelist who grew up in

and covered crime for Miami newspapers in the period documented by Monroe and Sweet.

Reception

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website

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the film has an approval rating of based on critics, with an average rating of . On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film have an above average score of 76 out of 100 based on 6 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The film was called "Poignantly nostalgic" by Frank Scheck of ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade pap ...

''.

References

External links

Daily Poetry Dose, ''The Last Resort''

WNYC WNYC is the trademark and a set of call letters shared by WNYC (AM) and WNYC-FM, a pair of nonprofit, noncommercial, public radio stations located in New York City. WNYC is owned by New York Public Radio (NYPR), a nonprofit organization that di ...

* 2018 films 2018 documentary films American documentary films American independent films Documentary films about Jews and Judaism in the United States 2018 independent films 2010s English-language films 2010s American films {{US-documentary-film-stub