Kirsten Dunst, like Drew Barrymore or Lindsay Lohan, is a blond that grew up in front of the camera – arguably the most gorgeous, and certainly the finest actress of the three. In Melancholia, she also becomes the most daring and memorable as Justine, a young bride whose anxiety spoils …
HollywoodandFine.com Perhaps I’m not qualified to write about “Sleeping Beauty,” the debut film from Australian director Julia Leigh. I am, after all, a middle-aged man. And this meandering movie, which manages to make nudity monotonous and presents sex as a distasteful commercial venture, seems to be about a kind of …
HollywoodandFine.com Never a popular part of the Shakespeare canon, “Coriolanus” (opening in limited released Friday, 12/2/11) bears a peculiar timeliness, in the muscular directorial debut by Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes directed and stars in this film, which transposes Shakespeare’s drama about a career soldier forced to cope with political reality to …
HollywoodandFine.com Takeshi Kitano has always been a rule-breaker so it’s no surprise that “Outrage,” his latest gangster film, should foil expectations. A good part of that has to do with Kitano himself. Cast as a yakuza underboss in a violent, almost Shakespearean tale of double-dealing underworld power struggles, Kitano lets …
HollywoodandFine.com The fact that the dim-witted and near-sighted MPAA has slapped an NC-17 rating on Steve McQueen’s “Shame” implies that there is something prurient about this film, whose central figure is a sex addict, struggling with his demons. But, as intense and involving as this film is, the last thing …
David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method” is about the talking cure – specifically, the kind of talk therapy pioneered by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung at the start of the 20th century. Freud and Jung, however, nearly talk the audience to death in Cronenberg’s bloodless, pokey film. Though his cast – …
HollywoodandFine.com “The Artist” may be the year’s most brightly imaginative and purely enjoyable film. It may also be the toughest sell. How many people, after all, will be turned off if they’re told they should see a silent black-and-white film? And yet this movie by Michel Hazanavicius is not only …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s hard now to conceive of just how huge a star Marilyn Monroe was at the peak of her fame in the mid-1950s. Take Lady Gaga, multiply her by Brangelina at their most visible – and then take it to the 10th power. You get a hint of that …
Leo on Her Unconventional Oscar Ads February 10, 2011 10:00 AM by Thelma Adams Actress Melissa Leo inevitably surprises. Usually, it’s because she dives so deep into her characters. Whether she’s jabbing her forefinger at the camera as The Fighter‘s peroxide-blonde matriarch Alice Ward, or driving a clunker across a …