HollywoodandFine.com The New York Film Festival is underway and two of the biggest commercial titles of the fall are in its lineup. (They also happen to be opening this week.) Neither of these lives up to the hype, though I recognize that will be a distinctly minority opinion. “The Martian”: …
HollywoodandFine.com Right from the start, let me stipulate that, when it comes to most comic-book movies, I turn into Anti-Man. I believe comic-book movies — and the overweening Comic-Con mentality that has consumed the Hollywood studios — are strangling the movie industry, in part because these movies are so generic. …
HollywoodandFine.com Let me start by saying two things: I think Amy Schumer is one of the funniest humans around. I also think Judd Apatow is one of the most overrated comedy directors of our time. To my mind, “Trainwreck” is both a very funny movie — and yet another example …
HollywoodandFine.com We live in a media culture which constantly insists that we should look and feel better than we do. We try to mimic the images we see, but it’s an impossible task. Obviously, you can never reach your ideal; no one is ever exactly the way they think they should …
HollywoodandFine.com “San Andreas”? I thought we critics drove a stake through this film’s heart when it came out 40 years ago under the title “Earthquake.” But each generation of special effects creates its own avalanche of disaster films: movies about disasters that are themselves disastrous. The latest iteration of cutting-edge …
HollywoodandFine.com I am a big fan of Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer. The Norwegian films of his that have made it to American screens – “Kitchen Stories,” “O’Horten” and now “1001 Grams” – reveal a miniaturist dealing in microcosms that reveal the world. In the case of “1001 Grams,” it is …
HollywoodandFine.com James “The Amazing” Randi is not just a magician – he’s a skeptic, a rather more important calling. As the subject of the documentary “An Honest Liar,” by Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom, Randi comes across as an alternately engaging and crusty old guy. His bushy eyebrows take on …
HollywoodandFine.com Sports movies starring Kevin Costner: It could be a category on “Jeopardy.” But that’s not really a bad thing. While the Costner oeuvre has its share of titles devoted to athletic themes, he hasn’t made many bad ones. He has a solidity and an honesty on screen that make him …
HollywoodandFine.com Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” arrives on the big screen 27 years after it opened on Broadway – and with the same second-act problems that have plagued it through the years. Adapted to the screen by Rob Marshall (for whom his first feature, “Chicago,” may end up as the …
HollywoodandFine.com At heart, “Big Eyes” is a just a drama about a codependent relationship that strays into abusiveness, in which the wife finally finds the strength to walk away from a domineering husband. Except that Tim Burton’s latest film is about the marriage of Walter and Margaret Keane, a pair …
HollywoodandFine.com I bristle whenever Hollywood decides that it’s time to remake a film from the recent past (although, with a history of cinema that only extends a little over 100 years, it’s ALL the recent past). OK, so I bristle at all remakes – continuing evidence of the death of …
HollywoodandFine.com Ava Duvernay’s “Selma” couldn’t be more timely. Duvernay’s film (about the voting-rights demonstrations and protests of 1965) depicts black men and women standing up for their rights as citizens of the United States of America. You can’t help but be saddened by just how closely these demonstrations – and …
HollywoodandFine.com And so it comes to an end – again. Some might argue that, having taken the dense “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and condensed it into three monumental films, Peter Jackson should have had no trouble turning “The Hobbit” into an equally enjoyable and involving one-off. Guess again. The …
HollywoodandFine.com To my mind, “The Imitation Game” is the best film of the year: a gripping tale of wartime espionage and code-breaking that also manages to be the character study of an important figure whose contributions have been ignominiously ignored. Morten Tyldum’s film tells the story of Alan Turing, played …