Filmmaker Pablo Larraín’s international reputation rests on a decade-long run of films prodding at the bugaboos haunting the collective historical imagination of his native Chile. Despite a proclivity for some formal unorthodoxies—shooting on vintage videotape in order to evoke the milieu of late 1980s television in No (2012), for example—Larraín …
Through absolutely no fault of his own, Warren Beatty was born to be one of the handsomest men on Earth. Everybody has to play the hand he’s dealt, even if it’s the five aces that have, for Beatty, given him the air of adorable puzzlement he has been deploying for …
She is of royal blood. She has an overprotective father. She has an animal sidekick—two, actually—and a personal dream she needs to fulfill, no matter how many people tell her she can’t. Yeah, she’s a Disney princess, all right. Except Moana is the daughter of a Polynesian chieftain. And her …
Manchester by the Sea, about a self-punishing, depressive loner (Casey Affleck) who slowly comes back to life after enduring a series of brutal losses, is the funniest movie about grief ever made. But that’s far from the only remarkable thing about it. This film by playwright turned filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan …
One day, Denis Villeneuve will make a truly great movie. This is, apparently, a controversial opinion. Many out there feel strongly that the Canadian filmmaker has been leaping from triumph to triumph in recent years—with Sicario, Prisoners, and Enemy under his belt—while some consider him a pretentious, emotionally manipulative charlatan. …
HollywoodandFine.com The New York Film Festival is underway and two of the biggest commercial titles of the fall are in its lineup. (They also happen to be opening this week.) Neither of these lives up to the hype, though I recognize that will be a distinctly minority opinion. “The Martian”: …
HollywoodandFine.com Depending on which source you believe, there are between one and two dozen — yes, you read that right, dozen — films opening this Friday in New York. Here is a brief look at a half-dozen of them: ‘Labyrinth of Lies’: This German film tells an uncomfortable story about …
HollywoodandFine.com More than 15 years in the making, “A Walk in the Woods” is an entertaining and enjoyable film, if a formulaic one. Adapted by Rick Kerb and Bill Holderman from the book by Bill Bryson, the story chronicles the decision by Bryson (played by Robert Redford) to hike the …
HollywoodandFine.com We take our mentors where we find them in life, though it’s not always apparent who’s teaching who. That’s the case in “Learning to Drive,” a comic drama by Isabel Coixet that offers beautifully matched performances by Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley. They are strangers drawn together by coincidence …
HollywoodandFine.com In a summer filled with cinematic bombast and overkill, it’s always a nice surprise to find a charming little comedy with heart like “People Places Things.” Directed by Jim Strouse, the film stars the reliably droll Jemaine Clement as Will, a seemingly happy father of young twins living with …
HollywoodandFine.com Guy Ritchie’s “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” is a day late and a dollar short — actually, make that several seasons late, for anyone who watches the outrageously funny animated series, “Archer.” Watching Henry Cavill deadpan his way through this film as CIA agent Napoleon Solo (the name says it …
HollywoodandFine.com I tend to blow hot and cold on the films of Noah Baumbach though, truthfully, more hot than cold. I like his spikiest, least-audience-friendly films (“Margot at the Wedding,” “Greenberg”), as well as more mainstream offerings like his breakthrough “The Squid and the Whale” or this year’s “While We’re …
HollywoodandFine.com Jonathan Demme’s “Ricki and the Flash” is one of those near-misses that feels as though a lot of discussion went into the rationale behind every wrong-headed decision. No doubt Demme (and screenwriter Diablo Cody) can explain why a failed singer playing in a bar band is someone we should …
HollywoodandFine.com Half the struggle in documentary filmmaking is finding the right material. The other half is figuring out what to do with it. Two new documentaries get both halves of that equation right. “Listen to Me Marlon” takes previously unheard tape recordings of Marlon Brando and illustrates them with film, …