HollywoodandFine.com A sequel to Sylvester Stallone’s 2010 hail-Mary all-action-star effort to regain relevance at the box office, “The Expendables 2” may be the biggest, bloodiest and most willfully stupid film since the last time Michael Bay stepped behind a camera. This one is directed by Simon West, someone else who …
HollywoodandFine.com Tony Gilroy is the smartest, most intriguing screenwriter since William Goldman was in his heyday. In a variety of films – including his own “Michael Clayton” and “Duplicity” – Gilroy has demonstrated both a toughness and a cleverness that few contemporary screenwriters possess. He comes through again with “The …
HollywoodandFine.com At about the halfway point in the new remake of “Total Recall,” I thought, “Wow, this is pretty good.” But pretty good is all it managed. Though Len Wiseman’s reworking of Philip K. Dick’s story (and the 1990 Paul Verhoeven/Arnold Schwarzenegger film that was extrapolated from it) comes up …
HollywoodandFine.com The second film of the summer inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s “La Ronde,” Fernando Mereilles’ “360” is an intriguing jigsaw puzzle of a movie, less schematic than Schnitzler’s play (or “30 Beats,” the dreadful film of a couple weeks ago). Still, it’s more interesting for its individual pieces than what …
HollywoodandFine.com America’s love affair with the stars of big business should have come to an end with the greed-driven crash of our financial system in 2008. Yet, somehow, Donald Trump remains not just a celebrity but one who was actually considered seriously as a presidential candidate – for about a …
HollywoodandFine.com Gorgeously shot and acted with aching tragic truthfulness, Michael Winterbottom’s “Trishna” is a romance of depth and feeling. Part of that, of course, is the source material; Winterbottom, who also wrote the script, has transposed Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” to modern India, where class differences still hold …
HollywoodandFine.com “Crazy Eyes” was spawned by the same boozy mentality (and, sometimes, sentimentality) that has inspired the work of everyone from Dylan Thomas to Charles Bukowski. If Adam Sherman’s film, now in limited release, occasionally wobbles under the delusion that alcoholics are actually visionaries and their bad behavior comprises the …
HollywoodandFine.com Boys will be boys. Always. Testosterone may not confer eternal youth on the male of the species, but it does enforce perpetual juvenile traits that can never truly be bred out of men. These come to the fore in Jay and Mark Duplass’ “The Do-Deca-Pentathalon.” A shaggy, basic tale …
HollywoodandFine.com I will admit: I tend to have a bias against movies with the number “3” in the title. If there’s ever a dead giveaway that all imagination has been sapped from a movie, it’s that second sequel (as if the first sequel wasn’t bad enough). Sure, the filmmaker can …
HollywoodandFine.com “The Intouchables,” opening Friday (5/25/12) in limited release, offers the epitome of the breakout performance: Omar Sy, who won the Cesar, the French Oscar, for best actor for his performance in this film, defeating Jean Dujardin for “The Artist.” Sy was already a star in France – but he’ll …