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 …
HollywoodandFine.com Penn and Teller’s “Tim’s Vermeer” is like a cinematic magic trick, one that unveils itself over the course of roughly 90 minutes – and encompasses the years it took Tim Jenison to work the illusion. Except it’s not an illusion. Jenison is an inventor who made his fortune creating …
HollywoodandFine.com Based on a true story, “Gimme Shelter” is one of those films that means well: It’s earnest, filled with the spirit of forgiveness – indeed, it wouldn’t seem out of place on the Lifetime network. But this story about an abused, homeless and unwed pregnant teen – played with …