HollywoodandFine.com Dear Steven Soderbergh: Please don’t stop making movies. Your name is high on the list of filmmakers whose careers I’m thankful have coincided with my career as a movie critic. And “Side Effects” is further proof that you are at the height of your powers as a filmmaker. There’s …
HollywoodandFine.com The waste of talent in Fisher Stevens’ “Stand Up Guys” is criminal. It’s the movie equivalent of shooting a man in Reno, just to watch him die. This tale of three aging lawbreakers – played by Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin – is not just clichéd. It’s …
HollywoodandFine.com Sometimes, all you want is a knock-down, guns-blazing approximation of an old-style western, even if it’s set in contemporary times. As a modern oater, “The Last Stand” is shamelessly entertaining. As guilty pleasures go, this one is relatively defensible. Directed by Korean émigré Kim Jee-woon, it’s a 21st-century take …
HollywoodandFine.com John Milius’ “Red Dawn,” released in 1984, was a simplistic, militaristic rabble-rouser of a film, a Reagan-era Cold War relic that offered lots of rah-rah about how mighty the United States fighting spirit was, even when its military was taken out of the picture. It looked silly and dated …
HollywoodandFine.com Anyone who has ever been caught up in the videogame revolution that exploded in the late 1970s and early 1980s – which has all but consumed popular culture for kids and teens in the time since – should have a ball with “Wreck-It Ralph.” But you don’t need to …
HollywoodandFine.com Jon Kasdan’s “The First Time” captures one of those moments in life when you only hope you have the presence of mind to absorb every detail so that you can savor it later. It’s that moment when you were in exactly the right place at the right time to …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s a little early to be proclaiming Ben Affleck’s “Argo” the best movie of the year – but one of the best? No question. Among the films I saw at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, it was the most exciting and engrossing. And I can’t think of anything I’ve …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s one thing when documentaries like Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for ‘Superman’” and Madeleine Sackler’s much better “The Lottery” look at problems in public education and offer some solutions (such as charter schools). It’s something else when a manipulative drama like “Won’t Back Down” tries to lay the blame for …
HollywoodandFine.com Occasionally, two studios make the same movie and then try to be the first to release their version. It’s less common for the same year to produce two different films with almost identical storylines. But then, the plot for “Pitch Perfect” was old long before this year. So it’s …
HollywoodandFine.com The title of Dax Shepard’s “Hit & Run” doesn’t really make sense, given the movie itself. If it implies car chases, well, that’s accurate – but, again, it’s not about accidents. The only thing accidental here is that this movie got made – and they seem to have done …