HollywoodandFine.com Though billed as a Russian film noir, “Elena” skimps on the noir and more’s the pity. Instead, it’s a disciplined, controlled and ultimately disappointing drama of family tension and murder. The crime does not go unpunished, but the punishment seems mild to the point of nonexistence. Nadezhda Markina plays …
HollywoodandFine.com Here’s the best thing I can say about “The Avengers” (and no, I will NOT refer to it as “Marvel’s The Avengers,” because the branding is implicit): It offers a couple of the biggest laughs in recent memory, including a slapstick gag worthy of Chuck Jones in his “Looney …
HollywoodandFine.com Don’t trust the trailers for Anne Renton’s “The Perfect Family.” They make it look like an irreverent, iconoclastic satire, one that attacks hypocrisy among the pious – like something from the Farrelly brothers or, perhaps, John Waters. Oh wait – Waters already made that movie with Turner and called …
HollywoodandFine.com “American Reunion” is like a movie that’s become a zombie: a franchise that has risen from the grave of straight-to-video sequels to bring back the no-longer-youthful original cast for one more (hopefully lucrative) go-round. The stench of desperation permeates this film, a sequel to the 1999 gross-out hit and …
HollywoodandFine.com The less said about “Intruders,” the better. Despite a cast led by Clive Owen (who seems in serious need of career direction), this is a horror movie without a ghost of a chance – or an authentically scary moment. Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, “Intruders” operates on two tracks …
HollywoodandFine.com Jennifer Westfeldt has slowly built herself a respectable filmography as a writer of smart, entertaining romantic-comedies, beginning with “Kissing Jessica Stein,” continuing through “Ira & Abby,” both of which she also starred in. She’s worked outside the studio system for the most part, because Westfeldt tends to go for …
HollywoodandFine.com An Oscar nominee as best documentary, “Undefeated” is a sports film that’s less about football than it is about a coach, his players and the journey they take together. And it’s a terrific trip. Their team is the Manassas Tigers, a high school football squad in North Memphis, in …
HollywoodandFine.com At some point in the future, when they assemble a festival of films devoted to the still-rippling effects of George W. Bush’s unnecessary war in Iraq, you can add Liza Johnson’s film “Return” to the list of movies that deserve to be seen. Like Neil Burger’s “The Lucky Ones” …
HollywoodandFine.com I’ve always loved animation – make that, good animation – and feel lucky that my kids were the perfect age when Disney had its second golden age of animation in the late 1980s and early 1990s. My son was 4 when I took him to see 1991’s “Beauty and …
HollywoodandFine.com Never a popular part of the Shakespeare canon, “Coriolanus” (opening in limited released Friday, 12/2/11) bears a peculiar timeliness, in the muscular directorial debut by Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes directed and stars in this film, which transposes Shakespeare’s drama about a career soldier forced to cope with political reality to …
HollywoodandFine.com Takeshi Kitano has always been a rule-breaker so it’s no surprise that “Outrage,” his latest gangster film, should foil expectations. A good part of that has to do with Kitano himself. Cast as a yakuza underboss in a violent, almost Shakespearean tale of double-dealing underworld power struggles, Kitano lets …
David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method” is about the talking cure – specifically, the kind of talk therapy pioneered by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung at the start of the 20th century. Freud and Jung, however, nearly talk the audience to death in Cronenberg’s bloodless, pokey film. Though his cast – …
HollywoodandFine.com Three cheers for Martin Scorsese, who has not only made “Hugo” one of the most lovingly fanciful and heartfelt films of the year – he has also pulled off the subversive trick of introducing a new generation of kids to the magic of silent movies. And, to boot, he’s …