HollywoodandFine.com In terms of creating moments that capture the excitement a live musical performance can arouse, Todd Graff knows his stuff. He showed it in 2003’s underrated “Camp,” in 2009’s disposable “Bandslam” – and he does it again in “Joyful Noise,” a movie with big, rousing soul-gospel songs that take …
Dolly and Latifah Reclaim Glee By Armond White Todd Graff’s Joyful Noise tells the story of a Pacashau, Ga., church choir entering a gospel music competition against better-financed groups. It’s an underdog fable that neatly parallels Graff’s own career since directing his 2001 debut film Camp, the underappreciated–yet secretly influential–pop …
HollywoodandFine.com I’ve always loved animation – make that, good animation – and feel lucky that my kids were the perfect age when Disney had its second golden age of animation in the late 1980s and early 1990s. My son was 4 when I took him to see 1991’s “Beauty and …
The 2011 Better-Than List for CityArts: Armond White looks back at the best movies that surpass and defy the year’s worst. By Armond White We’ve reached the point where movies are less popular than other forms of pop culture yet remain compelling–as much for what they recall about the humanities …
HollywoodandFine.com Let’s sum up, shall we? I essentially worked right through the holidays, in terms of posting on a daily basis. So I’m taking a few days off from reviewing and will resume the daily treadmill when I get back from a short break next Wednesday (1/12/12). I did my …
HollywoodandFine.com Think of “It’s About You” as the “Tree of Life” of rock-docs: a movie so in love with atmospherics and self-examination that it completely loses track of its subject. As rock documentaries go, “It’s About You,” ostensibly a film about John Mellencamp by photographer Kurt Markus and his son, …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s not that I don’t think David Fincher is a solid director. But I don’t think he’s the Second Coming either, though some of the reviews he tends to get would have you believe otherwise. What finally tore it was his version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” …
HollywoodandFine.com One of the intriguing phenomena of the 2008 election was the fact that, while African-Americans voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama for president, that surge of black voters at the polls in California was one of the factors in the passage of Proposition 8, which rendered same-sex marriage illegal in …
HollywoodandFine.com Family dynamics make for potent drama – and few films this year have used that idea to better effect than Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation,” which made my 10-best list for 2011. The drama stems less from head-to-head conflict – though that comes, eventually – but from subtler things. Truth …
HollywoodandFine.com The focus isn’t even on her. We’re in a grungy British superette (as we used to call them in the Midwest) and some raucous music is playing loudly as an elderly woman shops for milk. It’s only because the camera turns its attention in her direction that we really …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s unusual to have Steven Spielberg competing with himself at the box office this holiday weekend, but there he is – with “The Adventures of Tintin” and now with “War Horse.” Based on the popular children’s book that inspired the Tony-winning Broadway production, “War Horse” is exactly what it …
HollywoodandFine.com Matt Damon has had a strong career playing hard-edged, serious guys like Jason Bourne or the title character in “Good Will Hunting.” So you forget his aptitude for comedy. He brought it to “30 Rock,” just as he did for the Farrelly brothers in “Stuck on You.” Still, I …
HollywoodandFine.com You would think that, after World War II, Europe had seen all of the genocide it could stomach for a century or so. But, no, here came the Serbs in the early 1990s, with their ethnic cleansing and wholesale butchery and rape of the Bosniak and Muslim population. There …
HollywoodandFine.com I keep want to referring to Stephen Daldry’s film of Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” as, instead, “ ..& Incredibly Cute.” That’s unfair. It’s not even true; well, not completely. Still, the performance by young “Jeopardy” champion Thomas Horn as the central character of this movie …