By Armond White The worst Steven Spielberg production ever is, without doubt, his Obama homage, Steven Spielberg’s Obama. Unlike his disingenuous Obama-in-disguise campaign feature film, Lincoln, this two-minute satirical short looks artless and slapdash; it was made for last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner–an annual event for fatcats that contradicts …
HollywoodandFine.com It seems startling to me that so few people recognize the name of actor Michael Shannon when they hear it. Perhaps “The Iceman” will make the difference. Shannon, after all, has an Oscar nomination under his belt (for “Revolutionary Road”). He has been the star of a handful of …
HollywoodandFine.com Adapted and extrapolated from Henry James’ novel of the same name, “What Maisie Knew” is a film that puts the audience right in the title character’s world – and forces it to experience it the way she does. In this case, Maisie is a 7-year-old girl (played by the …
By Armond White Unmistakably Pal Sverre Hagan’s appearance in Kon-Tiki as Norwegian explorer Thor Heyedahl is modeled after Peter O’Toole’s T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia. Not just tall, blue-eyed with burnished blond hair, Hagan also conveys obsessive determination like O’Toole’s Lawrence, making Heyerdahl’s decision to build a balsa-wood raft …
HollywoodandFine.com Though a bit literal for a film that traffics in magical realism, Deepa Mehta’s “Midnight’s Children” is both dreamy and dramatic, a fascinating view of Indian history seen through the prism of a personal – and occasionally twinned – story. Adapted by director Deepa Mehta and screenwriter Salman Rushdie …
By Armond White Funny that the Film Society of Lincoln Center paid tribute to Barbra Streisand on April 22 with its 40-year-old Chaplin Award even though Streisand’s movies are not the kind typically shown in Film Society programming. As a fundraiser, it was unparalleled. Co-chair of the event, Ann Tenenbaum …
HollywoodandFine.com Over the years, I’ve developed what I refer to as the 20-minute rule. It basically says that a movie that hasn’t hooked me in the first 20 minutes probably isn’t going to. I tend to apply it most forcefully when I’m watching films at festivals or when I’m sorting …
HollywoodandFine.com “Mud” is a coming-of-age tale that feels a bit like a modern “Huckleberry Finn,” mixed with a young-adult romance novel. Yet there is something both engaging and unique about Jeff Nichols’ plain-spoken tale of youngsters learning hard lessons about the nature of love and the darker side of the …
By Armond White Sloppy storytelling has become so standard for American filmmakers (Side Effects, The Place Behind the Pines) that Francois Ozon’s new trifle In the House feels especially pleasurable. Storytelling is its subject in the same sense as Todd Solondz’s 2001 Storytelling. Ozon plays with his increasing filmmaking skill …
HollywoodandFine.com Francois Ozon’s “In the House,” opening Friday (4/19/13) in limited release, gets in your head, slowly at first, then with greater and greater speed. Initially seeming like a comedy about the vicarious voyeurism of a literature teacher at a Paris high school, it casually transforms itself into something else: …
