How Fast & Furious 6 crushes Iron Man 3 By Armond White The cynicism that makes Iron Man 3 so lousy is defied by the good-time camaraderie of Fast & Furious 6. Dominic Toretto and Brian O’Connor (Vin Diesel and Paul Walker) are more likable than Robert Downey’s snarky Tony …
HollywoodandFine.com Here’s the nicest thing I can say about “Fast & Furious 6”: It’s not in 3D. That’s apparently the only restraint that the makers of this high-end piece of cinema junk-food indulged in. Otherwise, as exercises in preposterous mayhem go, “Fast & Furious 6” is, well, preposterous. And full …
While bromances flourish – doctors, racecar drivers and superheroes bond regularly — memorable movies about best girlfriends are a rare species. But in that environment, “Frances Ha,” the brilliant black-and-white comic collaboration between star-writer Greta Gerwig (“To Rome with Love”) and writer-director Noah Baumbach (“Greenberg”), is a game-changer. Best friends …
HollywoodandFine.com Other documentarians may be more famous than Oscar-winner Alex Gibney, but there’s no one working right now who afflicts the comfortable with more energy and pointedness than Gibney. “We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks” is Gibney’s second documentary in less than a year, after the upsetting and revealing …
HollywoodandFine.com I was heartened to read that, on its opening weekend, “The Great Gatsby” did solid business, despite some unjustly vicious reviews. I was even more uplifted when I read that, in placing a strong second to “Iron Man 3,” “Gatsby” only earned one-third of its box-office take from people …
By Armond White Frances Ha runs a very long 84 minutes. It offers an obnoxiously self-satisfied portrait of a young white New Yorker–played by Greta Gerwig–running out her parent’s stipend, roommating with other New York hipsters, sometimes skipping the pond to Paris, all the time pursuing her goal to be …
By Armond White Julianne Moore has unintentionally foundered her acting career in insufferable films like Savage Beauty, HBO’s Game Change, The Kids Are Alright, Crazy Stupid Love, Chloe, Blindness, Children of Men, I’m Not There, Freedomland, Hannibal, The Hours–why go further? It’s been a long time since Moore challenged Meryl …
HollywoodandFine.com I often note how difficult it is to create a comedy that’s not only smart and funny but also charming and surprising. But first-time director Craig Zisk, a TV veteran, has done that with “The English Teacher,” which opens in limited release today (5/17/13). Like a witty update on …
HollywoodandFine.com Having broken through as a filmmaker with the intriguing and moving “The Freebie,” actress Katie Aselton suffers the sophomore slump with her second film as a director, “Black Rock.” Written by her husband, Mark Duplass, “Black Rock” is meant to be a “Deliverance”-style thriller, a girls-vs.-boys tale set on …
HollywoodandFine.com South Korean cinema has exploded internationally in the past decade or so. I won’t speculate about how South Korean society informs the consciousness of its filmmakers because, well, we probably only see a fraction of the output. It would be like basing your opinions of American culture on the …
