HollywoodandFine.com Penn and Teller’s “Tim’s Vermeer” is like a cinematic magic trick, one that unveils itself over the course of roughly 90 minutes – and encompasses the years it took Tim Jenison to work the illusion. Except it’s not an illusion. Jenison is an inventor who made his fortune creating …
HollywoodandFine.com Adam Rodgers’ “At Middleton” is that rarity: a romantic comedy that manages to surprise by subverting the formula and coming up with something fresh. Rodgers and cowriter Glenn German create two pairs of opposites, then mix and match them in a story about parents taking their children to tour …
HollywoodandFine.com Almost from the moment the economy collapsed during the 2008 presidential campaign, there has been a war to control the narrative of what led to the disaster – nearly a catastrophe – that almost brought down the nation’s (and the world’s) economy. One of the earliest was Charles Ferguson’s …
HollywoodandFine.com “Labor Day” is one of those movies that either gets you to buy in and play along, or loses you at a crucial moment, earning only your mockery for the rest of its running time. I understand that urge to mock – and yet I’m not mocking: Jason’ Reitman’s …
HollywoodandFine.com Godfrey Reggio makes the kind of movies I think Terrence Malick longs to make. While Malick has already rejected story and plot, as well as dialogue, character development and, occasionally, even characters, he’s never made a film where he ignored all of these things completely. And that’s all that …
HollywoodandFine.com Based on a true story, “Gimme Shelter” is one of those films that means well: It’s earnest, filled with the spirit of forgiveness – indeed, it wouldn’t seem out of place on the Lifetime network. But this story about an abused, homeless and unwed pregnant teen – played with …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s easy to understand what they’re going for in the odd-couple action-comedy “Ride Along.” It’s the classic comedy-team set-up of the tough, cynical straight man and the big-hearted stooge. Whether it was Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Hope & Crosby, Martin & Lewis – or such modern attempts …
HollywoodandFine.com There is a lovely simplicity to Jillian Schlesinger’s film “Maidentrip,” which includes the credit “made with Laura Dekker.” Dekker was the Dutch girl who, in 2010, at the age of 14, set sail from Gibraltar in a quest to be the youngest person ever to circumnavigate the globe alone …
HollywoodandFine.com Arvin Chen’s “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” examines several different kinds of love in a gentle, engaging tale of two couples, each struggling at a crucial point in their relationship. Set in Taiwan, the film begins with Mandy (Kimi Hsia), who is about to marry San-San (Stone), a …
HollywoodandFine.com Peter Berg’s “Lone Survivor” opens at the end of the film on a harrowing moment about the title character, then jumps back in time to the beginning of this nerve-wracking story. But before Berg introduces us to the four central figures in this narrative, he drops in a segment …
HollywoodandFine.com Unless they find new ways to recycle their personae, comic actors would seem to have a limited shelf life. It’s all about reinvention. Otherwise, you’re stuck doing the same dumb stuff over and over. (Exhibit A: Adam Sandler). Still, I have to hand it to Ben Stiller. While his …
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 “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Tolstoy observed and he could have been talking about the Weston clan of “August: Osage County,” when he wrote that line to start “Anna Karenina.” This particular family get-together is like one of those “Royal Rumble” professional wrestling matches, where …
HollywoodandFine.com The only way I can imagine having fun watching “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” is if I were drunk enough to be really funny myself, watching it with a group of friends on TV in the comfort of my living room – “Mystery Science Theater 3000”-style. Even then, it …