HollywoodandFine.com Christopher Nolan’s philosophy of filmmaking apparently is this: Why make one movie when you can make three? Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. “Interstellar” works much more often than it doesn’t. While the script by Nolan and his brother Jonathan wants to traffic in ideals and ideas about gravity, …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s the time of year when critics release their lists of the year’s best films. It feels like a competitive sport – or a provocation, which all of these lists are, by nature. As in: “This is my list of the best films. If you don’t agree, you’re wrong.” …
HollywoodandFine.com He’s not really a wolf – he’s more like a hyena, a scavenger, a bottom-feeder. Why would you want to know his story? That’s my takeaway from Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.” His name is Jordan Belfort and, as played by Leonardo DiCaprio, he’s a fun-loving, money-churning, …
HollywoodandFine.com Having squandered most of this century’s first decade being a movie star, Matthew McConaughey has approached its second stanza as an actor. The results have been salutary. In a year in which he’s already turned in stellar work in “Mud,” after last year’s “Magic Mike” and “Killer Joe,” here …
HollywoodandFine.com “Mud” is a coming-of-age tale that feels a bit like a modern “Huckleberry Finn,” mixed with a young-adult romance novel. Yet there is something both engaging and unique about Jeff Nichols’ plain-spoken tale of youngsters learning hard lessons about the nature of love and the darker side of the …
Kathryn Bigelow’s war drama Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, was named Best Picture from this year’s vote. The film also won two other awards for Best Director (Bigelow) and Best Cinematographer (Greig Fraser). Steven Spielberg’s historical drama Lincoln, picked up three awards, including Best Actor …
HollywoodandFine.com Lee Daniels received all sorts of accolades for 2009’s “Precious,” which seemed to announce a fiery new filmmaking talent. But the real indicator of Daniels’ sensibility may actually be 2005’s “Shadowboxer,” an overwrought and preposterous tale of professional killers (Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr.) who also happen to …
HollywoodandFine.com He won a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for “August: Osage County,” a tale of family dysfunction that was scathing and dark. But that wasn’t playwright Tracy Letts’ first foray into the brutal dynamics of family strife: Consider his play, now a film, called “Killer Joe.” Dysfunctional? The Smith …
HollywoodandFine.com Richard Linklater has made a career of defying expectations, making everything from “The Bad News Bears” and “School of Rock” to “A Scanner Darkly” and now “Bernie.” “Bernie” might be his most unexpected film yet. Based on a true story about events and people in a small Texas town …