HollywoodandFine.com Actress Tilda Swinton seems caught in the role of mother of troubled teens and shepherdess of similar lost sheep. She’s played them with quiet panic (as the mom of a suspected murderer in “The Deep End”) and bluster (the title role in “Julia,” sudden guardian in an ill-planned kidnapping). …
HollywoodandFine.com I’ve seen what feels like a surprising number of movies that genuinely excited and moved me this year, films as different as “The Descendants” and “Drive” – both of which are on my 10-best list below. “The Descendants” is my favorite film of the year for its ability to …
HollywoodandFine.com From time to time, I offer an installment in my “Annals of the Overrated.” But I don’t believe director David Gordon Green is worth an entire installment – so let this review of his latest film, “The Sitter,” serve as his induction. Consider him officially overrated. Green, you may …
HollywoodandFine.com Thrillers and spy tales have devolved in movies to a hash of slice’n’dice editing, prefabricated plots and outlandish action and gunplay that makes all espionage into James Bond or, worse, a video game. Which is why “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” is such a welcome relief. Like the John Le …
HollywoodandFine.com When is a comedy not a comedy? When it’s one of what apparently is becoming a series of holiday-themed movies by Garry Marshall. “Valentine’s Day” was the 2010 date movie from hell – an all-star cluster-grope that had fewer laughs than a rerun of “Laverne & Shirley,” Marshall’s signature …
HollywoodandFine.com People in Minnesota have this reputation for being “nice” that Diablo Cody seems determined to undermine – which she does in slashingly funny style in Jason Reitman’s “Young Adult,” opening in limited release Friday (12/9/11) before going wide on Dec. 16. The film reteams the “Juno” duo with a …
HollywoodandFine.com Perhaps I’m not qualified to write about “Sleeping Beauty,” the debut film from Australian director Julia Leigh. I am, after all, a middle-aged man. And this meandering movie, which manages to make nudity monotonous and presents sex as a distasteful commercial venture, seems to be about a kind of …
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 …
HollywoodandFine.com The fact that the dim-witted and near-sighted MPAA has slapped an NC-17 rating on Steve McQueen’s “Shame” implies that there is something prurient about this film, whose central figure is a sex addict, struggling with his demons. But, as intense and involving as this film is, the last thing …