HollywoodandFine.com Right from the start, let me stipulate that, when it comes to most comic-book movies, I turn into Anti-Man. I believe comic-book movies — and the overweening Comic-Con mentality that has consumed the Hollywood studios — are strangling the movie industry, in part because these movies are so generic. …
HollywoodandFine.com This seems to be the season for movies in the 140-150 minute range, length apparently meant to convey importance. David Ayer’s “Fury” is one of the few that warrants its length (or most of it). Brutal, punishing and exciting – in that order – “Fury” gives you an approximation …
HollywoodandFine.com I’m a little embarrassed at how much I enjoyed “The Raid 2,” Gareth Evans’ sequel to his blistering 2011 action film, “The Raid.” So let me be exceptionally clear: “The Raid 2” may be the most graphically violent movie in recent memory – and that’s taking into account the …
HollywoodandFine.com You get the feeling that Ruben Fleischer would have been happy to make an homage to the gangster movies of the 1940s (filtered through both a 1970s and a 21st-century perspective) when he was making “Gangster Squad.” That’s not the same thing, unfortunately, as making a derivative and slight …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s a Chekhovian truism that if you introduce a gun in the first act, it had better go off before the end of the play. That apparently didn’t register with David Ayer, who wrote and directed “End of Watch,” a competent but unremarkable new cops-on-the-streets tale starring Jake Gyllenhaal …
HollywoodandFine.com At first glance, “The Good Doctor” seems like a pilot for a TV series we’ve seen seemingly dozens of times – most successfully in “E.R.” You’ve got the earnest, ambitious young resident, Dr. Martin Blake (Orlando Bloom – and what happened to HIS career?), dealing with his new assignment …