HollywoodandFine.com At the point when it actually starts to rain blood near the end of the remake of “Evil Dead,” you would think that things couldn’t get any gorier. And of course you’d be wrong. You’ve got to say this for filmmaker Fede Alvarez: He knows how to bring the …
By Armond White Blancanieves is the most hilariously misunderstood movie since people took Haneke’s Amour to be a sweet love story. Is this peculiarity as simple as illiteracy or is it another case of cinematically illiterate critics who don’t know how to read what they see on screen? Spanish director …
HollywoodandFine.com There aren’t many filmmakers creating the kind of chewy, talkative dramas about real issues that used to be a staple of movie-going because, well, the audience willing to sit still for them is aging out and dying off. So bless Robert Redford: While “The Company You Keep” can’t sustain …
HollywoodandFine.com Neither terrible nor revelatory, Ramaa Mosley’s “The Brass Teapot” is the kind of movie you might stumble across on cable and stick with, if only because, well, you’ve got nothing better to do. Like W.W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” “The Brass Teapot” is a slight tale with a dark …
HollywoodandFine.com I will admit that, when it screened at the New York Film Festival a few years ago, I walked out of Antonio Campos’ “Afterschool” after about 30 minutes. And it colored my willingness to see his newest film, “Simon Killer,” opening Friday in limited release. But “Simon Killer” surprised …
By Armond White Derek Cianfrance must be a pimp to get a project like The Place Beyond Pines green-lighted. Its less than compelling story about a criminal (Ryan Gosling) and a police offer (Bradley Cooper) whose lives cross (a newspaper headline identifies them as “Moto-Bandit and Hero Cop”) is dragged …
By Armond White P.J. Hogan, Australia’s most appealing yet least heralded filmmaker, returns to prominence with Mental, a kind of musical screwball comedy about social misfits that at first seems perfectly designed for the era of “It Gets Better” nostrums. But Hogan is bolder than the politically correct pandering of …
HollywoodandFine.com People often debate situational ethics: Under what circumstances would an unethical act be ethical? Always an intriguing question. But what about situational movie standards? We’re talking about whether there’s ever a time when a bad movie should be given a pass because, well, it’s not as bad as it …
HollywoodandFine.com Andrew Niccol’s film of “The Host” starts so well that, when it suddenly slows to a crawl 20 minutes later, your impulse is to give it some slack – to let it find its feet and get back on track. Unfortunately, it never does. So what you end up …
By Armond White Following the IFC Center’s very canny “The Films of Stanley Kubrick” series, comes the documentary Room 237 which sums up the Kubrick cult. Comprised of theories spoken by five different Kubrick nerds over an assemblage of movie clips and diagrams by director Rodney Ascher, Room 237 pretends …
