HollywoodandFine.com Talk about mysterious islands – the one in “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” features an ensemble that includes Michael Caine, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – and Luis Guzman. That’s some bizarre casting. Oh yeah, and heartthrobs Josh Hutcherson and Vanessa Hudgens: You can’t overlook the reason this film’s core …
HollywoodandFine.com REYKJAVIK, Iceland – Mayor Jon Gnarr Kristinsson – better known as comedian Jon Gnarr – relaxes in a rocking chair in a comfy sitting chamber, just off the conference room that’s part of his suite of offices in Reykjavik City Hall. It’s a cold morning – windy, snowy (“Our …
By Armond White Bela Tarr’s The Turin Horse isn’t funny at all but it sure is laughable. A Hungarian farmer with a bum arm Ohlsdorfer (Janos Derzi) lives in a drab, yet limitless cabin with his morose spinster daughter (Erika Bok) who boils potatoes which go half-eaten. This goes on …
HollywoodandFine.com David Mackenzie’s “Perfect Sense” is an end-of-the-world romance in which the world disappears incrementally. Being involved in this velvet apocalypse is a little like being the Cheshire cat, unable to control which part of you will disappear next. Like Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” and Fernando Meirelles’ “Blindness,” Mackenzie’s cataclysm comes …
By Armond White “Ever hear of Plato’s allegory of the cave?,” one teenager asks another in Chronicle. This philosophy quiz was unexpected in the midst of a thrill ride movie but Chronicle is so surprisingly interesting, I wondered if its makers ever saw The Conformist (1971) where Bernardo Bertolucci visualized …
HollywoodandFine.com She’s a nonagenarian who, when dressed in black, looks a little like a bobble-head with a pipe-cleaner body. But, at the age of 91, entertainer Carol Channing has amazing energy and a rare spirit for life. As filmmaker Dori Berinstein shows in “Carol Channing: Larger than Life,” Channing is …
By Armond White George Lucas’ sales tactics for Red Tails, his $93 million production about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African American pilots in the armed forces, make a bigger bang than the film itself. On the publicity rounds, Lucas talked about the dearth of movies with African American heroes, …
HollywoodandFine.com I have a hard time getting scared by horror films that deal in the supernatural. But a horror film such as “The Grey” has an easier time sinking its teeth into me. I’m too pragmatic to worry about the paranormal, I guess – but trapped in the Arctic wilderness, …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s been interesting to hear George Lucas complaining about the lack of attention being paid to the black-themed film from his production company, “Red Tails.” The conventional wisdom is that Lucas himself had to put his money and his influence behind the movie to get it made and released …
By Armond White for CityArts Light Bulb Virtuosity–the quality that lit up the best of arts culture during 2012–turns out to be the quality least appreciated in this transitional period for technology, economics and politics. It’s ironic that artists like Steven Spielberg, Kanye West, Jay Z and Picasso (revived at …
HollywoodandFine.com Dreams not only die hard – they’re trampled to death and then mocked, in Gerardo Naranjo’s nonstop nightmare, “Miss Bala.” The Mexican film, inexplicably left off the short list for the foreign-language feature Oscar, is a high-speed action tale, told through the eyes of a helpless victim of that …
By Armond White Movie-watching can never be same after the double header of Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin, his first animated film, and his live-action War Horse. Each film upgrades the way our imaginations construct the world, the way we see ourselves in the digital age. All art devotes …
HollywoodandFine.com I don’t know whether Gina Carano has a future as an actress but she certainly kicks ass in Steven Soderbergh’s “Haywire,” a jet-propelled action-thriller that has little time for wasted motion. Working from a script by Lem Dobbs, who also wrote “The Limey,” Soderbergh has made an intense and …
HollywoodandFine.com Peter Facinelli looks a little like the young Tom Cruise: same slightly rabbity smile that radiates a sense of both supreme confidence and gnawing insecurity. Facinelli has a wider face with more prominent cheekbones but he has the same athletic physicality and a looseness that Cruise has lost. Forget …