HollywoodandFine.com Comedies in which women talk dirty and act stupid and horny – is this such a hard to genre to get right? It gives you renewed appreciation for “Bridesmaids,” which still stands as the contemporary template for the kind of comedy that always seems to come as a surprise …
HollywoodandFine.com Almost as soon as movies could talk, they were making films about the gangsters who came to prominence by supplying liquor to thirsty Americans who didn’t believe in the nanny-state laws against alcohol known as Prohibition. “Lawless,” however, is more of a post-Prohibition tale. Though it is set in …
HollywoodandFine.com At first glance, “The Good Doctor” seems like a pilot for a TV series we’ve seen seemingly dozens of times – most successfully in “E.R.” You’ve got the earnest, ambitious young resident, Dr. Martin Blake (Orlando Bloom – and what happened to HIS career?), dealing with his new assignment …
HollywoodandFine.com The best horror movies are the ones that hew closest to reality. I’m not talking slashers or serial killers (and certainly not the supernatural). But give me a realistic threat – with all the random, arbitrary tragedy that life dishes out everyday – and that’s scary to me. “The …
Atrocity Exhibition By Armond White Harvey Weinstein called for a summit meeting on movie violence soon after the Dark Knight Rises massacre. It hasn’t happened yet but Harvey’s word is movie law. So, instead, The Weinstein Company this week releases John Hillcoat’s Lawless, the most promiscuously violent movie since The …
HollywoodandFine.com “Side by Side” should be required viewing in any film school worth its salt and, undoubtedly, will be. But as up-to-the-minute as it is, by next year, it undoubtedly will be dated. And, before long, it will be a curiosity. Why? Because director Christopher Kenneally goes directly at the …
HollywoodandFine.com Is it really so hard to make a funny, dirty sex comedy? Apparently so, judging from the recent, brain-dead “The Babymakers” – and now the laugh-challenged “For a Good Time, Call…” Not only isn’t it funny – it’s not sexy, either. This soggy pudding of a film stars Lauren …
Hit & Run flattens the road movie By Armond White Dax Shepard, the lead actor, co-writer (with David Palmer) and co-director of Hit & Run, aims for the bleachers. He’s made a lowest common denominator comedy with a road movie premise about Charlie, a guy who leaves his witness protection …
HollywoodandFine.com There are the seeds of a funny and exciting film buried within “Premium Rush.” Instead, director David Koepp has made one long chase movie, with few comic moments and not that much excitement. Sure, you’ll flinch a few times and, perhaps, cringe at moments of impact when bike meets …
HollywoodandFine.com Mike Birbiglia seems like an easy-going guy, someone who probably has a little trouble with confrontation or sticking up for himself. At least that’s how he comes off in “Sleepwalk With Me,” the film version of his hit one-man show that played off-Broadway for almost a year, opening in …
