HollywoodandFine.com Allen Hughes’ “Broken City” has the bones and perhaps even the DNA of a better, darker and more interesting film. Its tale of marital discord and political in-fighting, as well as corruption and malfeasance, could have been constructed as one of those painfully compelling tales of a good man …
HollywoodandFine.com Sometimes, all you want is a knock-down, guns-blazing approximation of an old-style western, even if it’s set in contemporary times. As a modern oater, “The Last Stand” is shamelessly entertaining. As guilty pleasures go, this one is relatively defensible. Directed by Korean émigré Kim Jee-woon, it’s a 21st-century take …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s taken me a while to get around to it, but I wanted to offer a nod of approval for Walter Salles’ “On the Road,” which came out in limited release at the end of 2012. Dismissed by some critics for being too vague in its storytelling, Salles’ film …
HollywoodandFine.com “Quartet” marks Dustin Hoffman’s official debut as a film director, though he was originally slated to direct the 1978 cult hit, “Straight Time” (and, by some accounts, actually did). Hoffman is one of the seminal film figures of the 1960s and 1970s, part of a group (including Al Pacino …
HollywoodandFine.com I wanted to like “Promised Land” and certainly agree with its politics. So why did it feel like a preaching-to-the-converted letdown? Written by costars Matt Damon and John Krasinski, this Gus Van Sant film deals with a small Pennsylvania town hit hard by the recession. The area farmers are …
HollywoodandFine.com Tom Hooper’s film of the musical “Les Miserables” is an exceptional movie of a mediocre musical, the kind of middlebrow melodrama that passes for profound on Broadway. Part of the sorry big-box-musical era that brought us “Cats,” “Miss Saigon” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Les Miserables” was a …
HollywoodandFine.com At this point in his career, is there anything Quentin Tarantino can do to surprise us? Absolutely. I was floored by 2009’s “Inglourious Basterds” – not by the violence or the outrageousness of some of the action, but by Tarantino’s command of suspense, his ability to crank the tension …
HollywoodandFine.com You don’t have to be a parent to appreciate the horror, the challenge and the determination involved in the story of “The Impossible” – or to be plunged into the mindset of “What would I have done?” But if you are, you’ll have an extra appreciation for what the …
HollywoodandFine.com Foul-mouthed without being particularly funny, involved without being compelling, Judd Apatow’s “This Is 40” wants to be deeper than it really is. Which is an Apatowian trademark. Apatow aspires to be a contemporary Frank Capra – albeit one with fart and blowjob jokes. But his movies are always about …
HollywoodandFine.com David Chase’s “Not Fade Away” is one of my favorite films of 2012, a heartfelt but clear-eyed look at what it’s like to be a teen-ager who falls in love with rock’n’roll. More accurately, it examines what it felt like to be a teen in 1963, when the Beatles …