HollywoodandFine.com When you first meet Lucy, played with bracing forthrightness by Mira Sorvino in Nancy Savoca’s “Union Square,” well, let’s just say she can only grow on you. Because Lucy is – or seems to be – a serious pain. She’s whiny, she’s needy and she’s abrasive without even trying …
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 It took a Facebook communiqué from a friend, asking what I thought about “Savages,” for my thoughts to crystallize: “I was mixed,” I wrote. “Liked the action, thought the acting by the 3 heroes (and the writing for them) kind of sucked.” Which about sums it up. This film …
HollywoodandFine.com Spider-Man was an angsty teen that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created in “Amazing Fantasy” comics in August 1962 – a character that’s apparently a perfect fit for Andrew Garfield in “The Amazing Spider-Man.” Garfield sweeps aside memories of Tobey Maguire as the web-spinner. He captures the personality split …
HollywoodandFine.com Where do writers get their ideas? How do they go about putting words in other people’s mouths? To writers, it seems like an unanswerable question: It’s a compulsion, a need, an itch that needs to be scratched on a semi-regular basis. But the process seems like a mysterious one …
HollywoodandFine.com Pre-apocalyptic films tend to be thrillers: Yikes, the world is about to end – how can we escape or avert imminent disaster? But Lorene Scafaria’s “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” strikes a different chord: one that is wistfully romantic, a little melancholy and unexpectedly funny. …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s noteworthy that Disney/Pixar’s “Brave,” opening Friday (6/22/12), is the first Pixar feature – and the first Disney animated feature in a while – to focus on a heroine, rather than a hero. And not a heroine whose fate is somehow bound up with romance – that’s a crucial …
HollywoodandFine.com Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while. And there aren’t many blinder than Adam Sandler – or his fans. Sandler does find a few acorns – make that laughs – in “That’s My Boy,” his latest cinematic extrusion. Few of them are provided by him, …
HollywoodandFine.com “Rock of Ages” is technically a jukebox musical: a stage presentation of comedy, drama and song in which, instead of using original songs, the writers build a story out of existing music, re-purposing it to retrofit a plot or a plot point. Think “Mamma Mia.” But really, the jukebox …
HollywoodandFine.com I settled in for the screening of “Marina Abramovic The Artist is Present,” with the same skepticism I’d had when I went to see her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, which the film documents. But I came away feeling chastened – mostly that I’d been so dismissive …
HollywoodandFine.com Lynn Shelton had me at “Humpday,” the feature that introduced me to the intuitively funny filmmaker, who comes back strong with “Your Sister’s Sister,” opening in limited release Friday (6/15/12). Working once again with Mark Duplass, Shelton brings Emily Blunt and Rosemarie Dewitt into the mix, in a story …
HollywoodandFine.com I’m not sure why, but no one has been willing or able to speak truth to box-office power, so let me try: Robert Pattinson is a terrible actor. Oh, he’s pretty enough, with his sleepy eyes and pouty lips. Let him play a vampire in the “Twilight” series and …
HollywoodandFine.com Greta Gerwig is a cross between a younger Chloe Sevigny and a young Meg Ryan. She’s somehow backed into semi-“It” girl status, at least among boosters of a certain segment of independent film. She comes off mostly as off-puttingly self-pitying and mopey in “Lola Versus,” a self-consciously quirky-moody rom-drom. …