HollywoodandFine.com I was engaged for the first hour of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” – and frustrated into raging impatience by the final 90 minutes. So – 40 percent? Not a passing grade. “Inherent Vice” squanders a strong start in an orgy of wheel-spinning. Perhaps Anderson is indulging himself with …
HollywoodandFine.com “Labor Day” is one of those movies that either gets you to buy in and play along, or loses you at a crucial moment, earning only your mockery for the rest of its running time. I understand that urge to mock – and yet I’m not mocking: Jason’ Reitman’s …
HollywoodandFine.com I’ve been a fan of Spike Lee – if not of all of his movies – for 25 years. And I’ve found that, more often than not, he’s at his best when he’s directing someone else’s material – or someone else’s story. It was true of “The 25th Hour,” …
HollywoodandFine.com You get the feeling that Ruben Fleischer would have been happy to make an homage to the gangster movies of the 1940s (filtered through both a 1970s and a 21st-century perspective) when he was making “Gangster Squad.” That’s not the same thing, unfortunately, as making a derivative and slight …
HollywoodandFine.com I will admit: I tend to have a bias against movies with the number “3” in the title. If there’s ever a dead giveaway that all imagination has been sapped from a movie, it’s that second sequel (as if the first sequel wasn’t bad enough). Sure, the filmmaker can …