HollywoodandFine.com How can J-Lo ignore “The Boy Next Door”? She can’t, obviously, because he’s a blazing wackjob with an erotic obsession for his new neighbor. In this low-voltage thriller by Rob Cohen, she’s Claire Peterson, a high school English teacher (you can tell she’s smart because she wears glasses) whose …
HollywoodandFine.com Submarine movies rarely end well for the characters, almost never for the submarine itself. It’s a claustrophobic genre and, no matter what the actual plot, the story is always about men trapped in a nature-defying environment when that environment is threatened, often by the actions of the men themselves. …
HollywoodandFine.com Here’s my first problem with Michael Mann’s “Blackhat”: Chris Hemsworth doesn’t have the talent to make me believe he’s smart enough to be an MIT-educated, world-class computer hacker. As I watched him, I kept wondering what a real actor – Mark Ruffalo or Edward Norton, say – would have …
HollywoodandFine.com Stephen Belber’s “Match” is a slight but affecting film built around a stirring central performance by Patrick Stewart. He plays Tobias, a one-time principal male dancer who traveled the world with a ballet company and now makes his living as a choreographer and Juilliard instructor. But, on the day …
HollywoodandFine.com I spent years as a critic waiting eagerly for the end of the year, when I could finally (and with great deliberation) craft my 10-best list of movies for the year. No longer. Ten-best lists are, I’m afraid, a dime a dozen. Everybody has their own – and anyone …
HollywoodandFine.com I’ve never felt a particular affinity to the films of the Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc: like some, can leave the rest. But their newest, “Two Days, One Night,” pulled me in almost instantly and held me to its gripping conclusion. It’s a small story – an individual’s fight …
HollywoodandFine.com Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” arrives on the big screen 27 years after it opened on Broadway – and with the same second-act problems that have plagued it through the years. Adapted to the screen by Rob Marshall (for whom his first feature, “Chicago,” may end up as the …
HollywoodandFine.com I happened to see Angelina Jolie’s “Unbroken” before I read the Laura Hillenbrand book about the life of the amazing Louis Zamperini. My guest for an early screening was someone who had read and loved the book – and was dying to see the film. I came away from …
HollywoodandFine.com The two most disappointing films of the season should have been two of the most gripping: “Unbroken” (also opening on Christmas) and Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper,” Eastwood’s second misfire of the year (after the deadly “Jersey Boys”). The film is based on the memoir by former SEAL sniper Chris …
HollywoodandFine.com At heart, “Big Eyes” is a just a drama about a codependent relationship that strays into abusiveness, in which the wife finally finds the strength to walk away from a domineering husband. Except that Tim Burton’s latest film is about the marriage of Walter and Margaret Keane, a pair …
HollywoodandFine.com I bristle whenever Hollywood decides that it’s time to remake a film from the recent past (although, with a history of cinema that only extends a little over 100 years, it’s ALL the recent past). OK, so I bristle at all remakes – continuing evidence of the death of …
HollywoodandFine.com Ava Duvernay’s “Selma” couldn’t be more timely. Duvernay’s film (about the voting-rights demonstrations and protests of 1965) depicts black men and women standing up for their rights as citizens of the United States of America. You can’t help but be saddened by just how closely these demonstrations – and …
HollywoodandFine.com And so it comes to an end – again. Some might argue that, having taken the dense “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and condensed it into three monumental films, Peter Jackson should have had no trouble turning “The Hobbit” into an equally enjoyable and involving one-off. Guess again. The …
HollywoodandFine.com Had he been born in a different time and place, painter J.M.W. Turner might have been a member of the Hudson River School, a group of artists who worked in the second half of the 19th century, after Turner’s 1851 death. Like those painters, Turner was a master of …