Each new film that Terrence Malick, the once notoriously unhurried director, has made in the rash of projects since The Tree of Life (2011) evinces a further regression, an increasingly witless sacralizing of male-female coupledom. The title of Malick’s latest, Song to Song, set in Austin against the backdrop of …
HollywoodandFine.com Be warned. John Maclean’s directorial debut, “Slow West,” practices truth in advertising. But “slow” seems harsh as an adjective for this compelling film. “Patient” would be a more apt description; “studied” or “measured” would be two more. Because, in presenting this Scotsman’s gloss on a tale of America’s Old …
HollywoodandFine.com If you’re keeping score at home, of the three Marvel comic-book movies so far this summer (a term I use advisedly for a season that technically doesn’t start for another month), “X-Men: Days of Future Past” outranks “Amazing Spider-Man 2” and is about on a par with “Captain America: …
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 Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” is the year’s most powerful film, an arthouse masterpiece which demands to be seen – and which will punch mainstream audiences in the gut. McQueen may be the most distinctive filmmaker to emerge since Quentin Tarantino. But while this film deals with similar …
HollywoodandFine.com The annual 10-best list is a critical ritual, one I’ve been practicing for far too many years. Sure, I have opinions about what the best films of the past year are – and so does every other critic. If I think “Argo” should be on the list but not …
HollywoodandFine.com As an act of cinema, “Prometheus” is stunningly designed, shot with great purpose in a serious fashion. When it finally shifts gears from “Building Dread” to “Action,” director Ridley Scott is in his sweet spot: cannily designed, well-crafted suspense in the familiar pattern of tension and release, tension and …
By Armond White This exclusive CityArts series will chart recent releases that failed to to get Oscar nominations. Yet, just like the Oscar-nominated fare, these movies are not a part of film culture; but exist outside what moviegoers care about and talk about. Their staggered release delays the effects of …
HollywoodandFine.com I don’t know whether Gina Carano has a future as an actress but she certainly kicks ass in Steven Soderbergh’s “Haywire,” a jet-propelled action-thriller that has little time for wasted motion. Working from a script by Lem Dobbs, who also wrote “The Limey,” Soderbergh has made an intense and …
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 …
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 – …