HollywoodandFine.com Think of “Trouble with the Curve” as the anti-“Moneyball”: a movie that dismisses Billy Bean and Bill James’ data-centric approach to quantifying baseball talent, in favor of old-fashioned gut instinct. It’s also a clichéd and sentimental dramedy, in which the comedy is wan and the drama telegraphs itself like …
HollywoodandFine.com Quietly and unobtrusively, actor Josh Radnor is building himself a filmography of solidly made, unobtrusively sly and intelligent comedy. With 2010’s “Happythankyoumoreplease” (which had its flaws but also its pleasures) and now with “Liberal Arts” (open in limited release), Radnor proves that he knows a thing or two about …
HollywoodandFine.com It used to be that Disney would rerelease its old animated features on a regular schedule into theaters, reaching a new audience every decade or so with sure-fire quality entertainment that made parents cheer and kept kids entertained. That equation was upset with the rise of home video – …
HollywoodandFine.com It seems like an innocuous title – until you realize (or learn) that “The Manzanar Fishing Club,” a new documentary by Cory Shiozaki opening today in limited release, deals with one of this country’s most shameful chapters: the internment of Japanese citizens after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Shiozaki’s …
HollywoodandFine.com “Family – it’s what really matters,” says Robert Miller (Richard Gere), or words to that effect, to a gathering in his posh Fifth Avenue townhouse that includes his wife (Susan Sarandon), grown children, grandchildren and friends, who have assembled to celebrate his 60th birthday. So, in Nicholas Jarecki’s entertaining, …
HollywoodandFine.com Casually brutal, drily (but only intermittently) funny and frequently just plain strange, the German “Snowman’s Land” is a gloomy comedy that’s funnier in theory than in practice. Walter (Jurgen Rissman) is a hired killer who kills the wrong man by mistake – and so is banished by his boss, …
HollywoodandFine.com Stories within stories – “The Words” sometimes threatens to swallow itself whole. The fact that it doesn’t is a tribute to writer-directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, whose intriguing script uses each of its plotlines to resonate with and reflect the others. The film starts with Dennis Quaid, as …
HollywoodandFine.com Ira Sachs’ “Keep the Lights On” starts with a credit montage of bad paintings. The fact that they’re all homoerotic in content has nothing to do with their quality, which is amateurish. His protagonist, Erik (Thure Lindhardt), is first seen cruising gay-sex phone chatlines looking for company. He finds …
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 …
