HollywoodandFine.com There’s nothing wrong with “This Means War” that a humor-transplant couldn’t cure. Granted, romantic comedy is the hardest kind of comedy to pull off, especially when that romcom also wants to be an action-thriller. But director McG – who is like a less grandiose version of Michael Bay – …
HollywoodandFine.com The pickings among American animated features are so slim this year that they’ve allowed foreign-language animated films to slip into the category. But unlike American animated films, these aren’t kiddie cartoons. Instead, they’re adult works of cinematic art like “Chico & Rita,” a love story that covers decades and …
HollywoodandFine.com I found it instructive that, when I told my soon-to-be-25-year-old son that I’d seen “Safe House” and that it reminded me of “Three Days of the Condor,” he replied, “That reference would be relevant if I knew what ‘Three Days of the Condor’ was.” (He also said, “…and if …
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 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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 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 …