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 Is Jason Statham the new Sylvester Stallone? I’d always imagined him as the new Steve McQueen. But Stallone took this script down off the shelf, taking credits as writer and producer on “Homefront” for his “Expendables” costar. It’s not hard to imagine it with Stallone playing the central character, …
HollywoodandFine.com There were a handful of towering figures in social-justice movements of the 20th century – people who spearheaded a liberation movement in the name of a principle, at great cost to themselves. Gandhi comes to mind, along with Martin Luther King Jr. But my list would be topped by …
HollywoodandFine.com Disney has had such a long winning streak with its animated comedies and musicals that it’s almost possible to forgive the problems with “Frozen,” which opens in Los Angeles today and in wide release on Nov. 27. Indeed, there’s not a lot wrong with “Frozen”: The animation is state-of-the-art, …
HollywoodandFine.com I was a fan of Ken Scott’s Canadian comedy, “Starbuck,” when it reached American screens earlier this year. It’s a film that managed to be witty, surprising and soulful, all at the same time. I recall clearly checking its page on IMDB after I watched it, to find out …
HollywoodandFine.com There’s not much to say about “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” because it does what it’s supposed to. The sequel to last year’s hit, this second installment of what was a trilogy of books (but which will be a quartet of films) is directed by Francis Lawrence (the original …
HollywoodandFine.com Lists of the greatest this or the best that are provocations and nothing more. Whether it’s a critic offering his 10-best list of films (or books or TV shows or albums) for a given year or decade or an organization or website doing the same thing, it’s always a …
HollywoodandFine.com Fredrik Bond’s “Charlie Countryman” is an intriguing directorial debut: a blend of the madcap and the maniacal, a movie that mixes tones in ways that shouldn’t work but do. In that sense, it calls to mind a couple of other films: Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” and Jonathan Demme’s “Something …
HollywoodandFine.com Amir Bar-Lev and Charlie Lightening’s new film, “12-12-12” would be worth seeing if only for the moment where James Dolan loses his temper because of a technical glitch. Any New York Knicks fan can offer a laundry list of Dolan’s contumelies as the team’s owner. He’s one of those …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s interesting to see the way filmmakers stake out certain emotional territory as their own over the course of a career. Steven Spielberg is consumed with the notion of wonder, though he obviously has more arrows than that in his quiver. Martin Scorsese, in his own heaven/hell construct, seems …