HollywoodandFine.com Stephen Belber’s “Match” is a slight but affecting film built around a stirring central performance by Patrick Stewart. He plays Tobias, a one-time principal male dancer who traveled the world with a ballet company and now makes his living as a choreographer and Juilliard instructor. But, on the day …
HollywoodandFine.com Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” arrives on the big screen 27 years after it opened on Broadway – and with the same second-act problems that have plagued it through the years. Adapted to the screen by Rob Marshall (for whom his first feature, “Chicago,” may end up as the …
HollywoodandFine.com Paul Haggis’ “Third Person” may be the year’s most misunderstood film. It’s also one of the most intriguing. A jigsaw puzzle of characters and plots, it might remind some at first of “Crash,” Haggis’ Oscar-winning multiple-character drama. But “Third Person” has a different agenda. Initially, we see three different …
HollywoodandFine.com “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Tolstoy observed and he could have been talking about the Weston clan of “August: Osage County,” when he wrote that line to start “Anna Karenina.” This particular family get-together is like one of those “Royal Rumble” professional wrestling matches, where …
HollywoodandFine.com I have, on occasion, posted rants about filmmakers and actors who I consider overrated, a list that includes John Hughes, Terrence Malick, Zooey Deschanel and Ridley Scott, among others. And, at some point, a reader sent in a comment that said, “Why not write about someone who’s underrated?” To …
HollywoodandFine.com There are the seeds of a funny and exciting film buried within “Premium Rush.” Instead, director David Koepp has made one long chase movie, with few comic moments and not that much excitement. Sure, you’ll flinch a few times and, perhaps, cringe at moments of impact when bike meets …
HollywoodandFine.com “Rock of Ages” is technically a jukebox musical: a stage presentation of comedy, drama and song in which, instead of using original songs, the writers build a story out of existing music, re-purposing it to retrofit a plot or a plot point. Think “Mamma Mia.” But really, the jukebox …
HollywoodandFine.com Roman Polanski takes the experience of watching Yasmina Reza’s play, “God of Carnage,” and amplifies the tension, turns anger into absurdity and captures an entire universe in, essentially, two and a half rooms of a Brooklyn apartment, in the film, “Carnage.” The apartment belongs to Michael and Penelope Longstreet …