‘Identity Thief,’ reviewed by Marshall Fine

HollywoodandFine.com Think of “Identity Thief” as a weak-tea reworking of “Midnight Run,” itself a long-overvalued action-comedy that was never as good its proponents would have you think. Here’s the most damning credit in the list of unremarkable credits for “Identity Thief”: The writer is Craig Mazin, whose filmography includes “Scary …

‘Gangster Squad,’ reviewed by Marshall Fine

HollywoodandFine.com You get the feeling that Ruben Fleischer would have been happy to make an homage to the gangster movies of the 1940s (filtered through both a 1970s and a 21st-century perspective) when he was making “Gangster Squad.” That’s not the same thing, unfortunately, as making a derivative and slight …

‘Trouble with the Curve,’ reviewed by Marshall Fine

HollywoodandFine.com Think of “Trouble with the Curve” as the anti-“Moneyball”: a movie that dismisses Billy Bean and Bill James’ data-centric approach to quantifying baseball talent, in favor of old-fashioned gut instinct. It’s also a clichéd and sentimental dramedy, in which the comedy is wan and the drama telegraphs itself like …

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