HollywoodandFine.com I want to applaud Joss Whedon’s “Much Ado About Nothing” for all the things it does right, and I will. But Whedon’s side project – between his various TV and Marvel-related entertainments – gets one thing unfortunately wrong: It’s never very funny. Much of that has to do with …
HollywoodandFine.com Geoffrey Fletcher’s filmmaking debut, “Violet & Daisy,” is the summer’s oddest, most original treat. Imagine a script by Quentin Tarantino, directed by Wes Anderson – and you have an idea of just how deliciously surprising this film can be. It opens Friday (6/7/13) in limited release. The opening scene …
HollywoodandFine.com Shown at Sundance under the title “Toy’s House,” Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ “The Kings of Summer” is a coming-of-age tale that touches a lot of bases and explores a variety of tones in ways that most films are too timid to do. Based on a witty, imaginative script by Chris Galletta, …
HollywoodandFine.com Dear Will Smith, I read recently that you are involved in remaking Sam Peckinpah’s classic western, “The Wild Bunch.” So I’m writing this open letter, pleading with you to reconsider this unnecessary exercise. To my thinking, Peckinpah’s film is perhaps the greatest western ever made; a wider sampling of …
HollywoodandFine.com A movie that’s bound to set your paranoia sensors flashing, “The East” is a cerebral thriller in which it’s hard to tell who’s the hero and who’s the villain. That’s especially true for the film’s central character, a former FBI agent named Sarah, played by the film’s producer and …
HollywoodandFine.com “Fill the Void” is as interesting for the things it doesn’t do as for what it does. Written and directed by Rama Burshtein and set in the Hasidic community of Tel Aviv, it’s a story about family and a sense of duty, informed by a devout faith. The faith …
By Armond White In light of Michael bay’s Pain & Gain, it’s time to take another look one of its influences: Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 Zabriskie Point finally passes the test of time. Antonioni’s aestheticized vision of ‘60s political and spiritual turmoil was originally scoffed at as disingenuous and “unrealistic”–accusing the …
HollywoodandFine.com This apparently is the week for multiple unnecessary sequels, with “The Hangover Part III” going up against “Fast & Furious 6” (twice as uncalled-for) for that all-important teen-age dollar. So I’ll give the same “meh” response to “H3” as I did to “Iron Man 3”: better than the second …
HollywoodandFine.com Anyone who’s been married for any length of time should be able to enjoy Richard Linklater’s “Before Midnight,” if squirming in your seat can be considered a form of enjoyment. The third in a trilogy that began with “Before Sunrise” (1995) and continued with “Before Sunset’ (2004), this film …
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 …
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 …
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 …
