Hollywoodandfine.com There are so many movies released every Friday that no single critic has a prayer of seeing them all. But as it happens this week, I’ve seen several that deserve comment, if only briefly. Let’s start with “The Theory of Everything,” which some are touting as an Oscar contender. …
HollywoodandFine.com The same Disney folks that brought you “Bolt,” “The Emperor’s New Groove” and “The Princess and the Frog” return with “Big Hero 6,” a wildly imaginative action-comedy about super-tech-savvy kids somewhere in the near future. Set in San Francisco (rechristened San Fransokyo for reasons that are implied but unexplained), …
HollywoodandFine.com Only serious jazz fans remember Joe Albany, a pianist whose bright and energetic attack kept him working until his death in 1988. “Low Down,” based on a memoir by his daughter, Amy, feels hackneyed, despite being a true story. It struggles to be something more than the tale of …
HollywoodandFine.com What is most astonishing, as you watch Laura Poitras’ “Citizenfour,” is how calm everyone is. At least at first. The next most astonishing thing? How quietly rational all these people are, particularly considering the volcano of invective that their actions would unleash against them. These people are, really, one …
HollywoodandFine.com There hasn’t been a twisty, best-selling legal thriller whose film version was as anticipated as “Gone Girl” since, I would say, “Presumed Innocent.” (And don’t say “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” because, by the time most Americans were aware of the novel, the entire trilogy had been filmed – …
HollywoodandFine.com It would be easy to dismiss “The Good Lie” as manipulative, a movie aimed at the tear ducts (and we all know you can’t trust a movie about emotions). But while Philippe Falardeau’s film is not ground-breaking or earth-shaking, it’s still a touching, sometimes powerful tale of the strength …
HollywoodandFine.com I went into “This Is Where I Leave You” with trepidation, mostly having to do with its director, Shawn Levy. The man behind such standard-lowering hits as “Cheaper By the Dozen” and the “Night at the Museum” movies, Levy is the filmmaker version of that old saying: To a …
HollywoodandFine.com They used to make films like “A Walk Among the Tombstones” on a regular basis: mysteries built around flawed heroes, in which character was as important as plot, and action was the catharsis, not the reason for the story itself. Scott Frank, who directs and adapted the film from …
HollywoodandFine.com I wrote a long piece a couple years ago, about why I refused to review the third “Transformers” movie: because the first two sucked, because Michael Bay is the Antichrist, because life is too short to spend watching make-believe computer-animated robots fight each other. I could go on and …
HollywoodandFine.com After I saw “22 Jump Street,” I noted publicly that, while it was funnier than “21 Jump Street,” so was my root canal. (Although the latter did include laughing gas.) Still, the bar wasn’t particularly high. So why is this film currently floating atop the Rotten Tomatoes chart with …
HollywoodandFine.com If you’re keeping score at home, of the three Marvel comic-book movies so far this summer (a term I use advisedly for a season that technically doesn’t start for another month), “X-Men: Days of Future Past” outranks “Amazing Spider-Man 2” and is about on a par with “Captain America: …
HollywoodandFine.com “Neighbors” may not be a particularly well-thought-out film (huge third-act problems). But it has some of the biggest sustained laughs of the summer. The fact that the three biggest jokes are, in essence, penis jokes (one involves a used condom, so I count that) may have something to do …
HollywoodandFine.com So is “Divergent” the new “Hunger Games”? Or “Twilight”? Or even “Harry Potter”? Probably not. Not because it’s bad but because it’s not bad … but not great either. It’s middling, as so many movies based on the first book of a series tend to be. “Divergent” is derived …
HollywoodandFine.com It took me two tries to see “The Lunchbox” (the first time was at a film festival screening that was cancelled for technical reasons) – but it was more than worth the effort. Ritesh Batra’s moving, subtly witty and perceptive film, opening Friday in limited release, is a showcase …