HollywoodandFine.com There seem to be an endless series of student competitions about which to make documentaries – and any number have been made over the years. From “Spellbound” (about the National Spelling Bee) to last year’s “Louder Than a Bomb” (about high-school poetry slams) to “Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon” …
HollywoodandFine.com Jennifer Westfeldt has slowly built herself a respectable filmography as a writer of smart, entertaining romantic-comedies, beginning with “Kissing Jessica Stein,” continuing through “Ira & Abby,” both of which she also starred in. She’s worked outside the studio system for the most part, because Westfeldt tends to go for …
HollywoodandFine.com You shouldn’t see “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” on an empty stomach. Indeed, you should have sushi in ready proximity once you have seen this fascinating look at the world’s greatest sushi chef. And it better be good. Directed by David Gelb,”Jiro Dreams of Sushi” is a documentary portrait of …
HollywoodandFine.com I’d probably seen the placard on the side of New York city buses a half-dozen times – the one for “John Carter” in which what appear to be two giant, eye-less, four-armed apes are shown against an orange background with “John Carter” in big capitals – before I actually …
HollywoodandFine.com I don’t think there was a movie at last fall’s Toronto Film Festival (or New York after that) that thrilled me in the same way that “Footnote” did. Joseph Cedar’s film, about a family of academics, creates a tension that squeezes laughs out of the audience. It’s the kind …
Being Flynn Gets Human By Armond White Award Season is over and we can try to get back to films as part of our culture and not some meaningless race between vanity (actors), greed (the film industry) and celebrity-worship (the media) competing to see who can run our culture into …
HollywoodandFine.com Writer-director Taika Waititi may be the founder of his own school of humor: call it “cruel-reality” comedy, Kiwi division, as practiced in his film, “Eagle vs. Shark,” and now his semi-autobiographical “Boy.” Told from the first-person perspective of the title character, “Boy” is the story of what happens one …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s unfortunate but understandable that they had to change the name of Nick Flynn’s memoir, “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City,” to the more TV-ready title “Being Flynn.” If only they could have made it into an interesting tale, instead of a movie about miserable people making each other …
Marino Waxes, Rudd Wanes in Wanderlust By Armond White Wanderlust starts with an idea borrowed from Albert Brooks’ 1986 Lost in America–a yuppie couple respond to career setbacks by embarking on a cross-country journey that tests their mettle. Here, George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston) leave their tiny, expensive …
HollywoodandFine.com You know that feeling when a comedy has just elicited an unexpected howl of laughter from you? The kind that has you momentarily breathless from the sheer pleasurable violence of it? Well, that’s not something you’ll experience while watching David Wain’s “Wanderlust,” a movie that really wants to make …