HollywoodandFine.com Peter Berg’s “Lone Survivor” opens at the end of the film on a harrowing moment about the title character, then jumps back in time to the beginning of this nerve-wracking story. But before Berg introduces us to the four central figures in this narrative, he drops in a segment …
HollywoodandFine.com Unless they find new ways to recycle their personae, comic actors would seem to have a limited shelf life. It’s all about reinvention. Otherwise, you’re stuck doing the same dumb stuff over and over. (Exhibit A: Adam Sandler). Still, I have to hand it to Ben Stiller. While his …
HollywoodandFine.com He’s not really a wolf – he’s more like a hyena, a scavenger, a bottom-feeder. Why would you want to know his story? That’s my takeaway from Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.” His name is Jordan Belfort and, as played by Leonardo DiCaprio, he’s a fun-loving, money-churning, …
HollywoodandFine.com “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Tolstoy observed and he could have been talking about the Weston clan of “August: Osage County,” when he wrote that line to start “Anna Karenina.” This particular family get-together is like one of those “Royal Rumble” professional wrestling matches, where …
By Armond White The Wolf of Wall Street and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty share the same misfortune. Both films deal with the ambition of working-class protagonists: Scorsese’s three-hour epic about a kid from The Bronx who becomes a Wall Street titan (Leonardo DiCaprio) charts his aggression through mind-altering …
By Armond White Idris Elba is such a fine figure of a movie star that only racism (its practice and its expectations) can explain why his Black British suave masculinity prevented him from being the new century’s James Bond. Nelson Mandela will have to suffice and in Mandela: Long Walk …
By Armond White Two Parisian domestic tales take different approaches to modern morality. In the comedy What’s In a Name? several couples clash over dinner about the connotations behind the proposed name for an expected child. In the drama The Past, a love triangle falls apart when a woman and …
HollywoodandFine.com When my oldest son was a tot, one of the videotapes in heavy rotation on our TV was the cartoon feature, “The Land Before Time.” In it, a group of baby dinosaurs – a brontosaurus, triceratops and a couple of others – get separated from their herd during the …
By Armond White David O. Russell goes to the 1970s to satirize contemporary Americana in American Hustle. If the title sounds both plain and pretentious, it takes a sense of humor like Russell’s to get over those hurdles and he does it with his new stock company of actors–great talents …
HollywoodandFine.com The only way I can imagine having fun watching “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” is if I were drunk enough to be really funny myself, watching it with a group of friends on TV in the comfort of my living room – “Mystery Science Theater 3000”-style. Even then, it …
HollywoodandFine.com Spike Jonze’s “Her” is the year’s most audacious trick: a film whose best (and longest) moments are simply dialogue between two lovers, figuring out their feelings about themselves and each other. If that sounds like “Before Midnight” or either of the other Richard Linklater talking-lovers movies, well, OK – …
By Armond White When an apparition of Bob Dylan appears in Inside Llewyn Davis, it underscores the Coen Brothers’ abiding ambivalence about their Jewishness. Dylan, the oracular pop-star-prophet -outsider from Minnesota (like the Coens) represents an advance on mainstream culture and power that troubles the Coen Brothers’ fascination with American …
By Armond White By shooting his new film Nebraska in black and white, writer-director Alexander Payne reveals his phoniness. The contemporary-set story about an old man, Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) who travels from Montana to claim a Publisher’s Clearing House prize in the neighboring state Nebraska, has that stark, sad …
By Armond White As a filmmaker, professor and community leader, Spike Lee sends a rotten message to audiences, students, parents, etc. in Oldboy, his remake of Park Chan Wook’s 2003 horror fantasy. It’s the story of a man held prisoner in a charnel house/hotel then released, seeking ironic revenge for …
