HollywoodandFine.com Approaching the age of 80, with more than 40 feature films under his belt, Woody Allen continues to astonish, finding new ways to surprise audiences with each year’s film. With “Blue Jasmine,” he shows once again that he is a master of texture and tone – of creating complex, …
HollywoodandFine.com Ryan Coogler’s “Fruitvale Station” arrives in theaters as this year’s independent film to beat when it comes to year-end awards. Quiet, stirring, enraging and sometimes quite funny, Coogler’s film, which took the two top prizes at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is a snapshot of the dialectic of race …
HollywoodandFine.com Danny Boyle is one of those filmmakers – like Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese – who obviously enjoys every minute of making his movies, including editing the last, most minute detail. His films pop and jump with energy and excitement – even when they’re not actually showing something exciting. …
HollywoodandFine.com There’s been a lot of Oscar chatter about the fact that “Argo” seems on track to win the best-picture trophy this year – despite the fact that its director, Ben Affleck, was left off the list of best-director nominees. What seems to have gone undiscussed is the elephant in …
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 There’s nothing wrong with “Jack Reacher” that couldn’t be helped by losing 15 or 20 minutes of exposition and other kinds of explaining. Sort of like Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books: They’re long and involved but only sporadically interesting. Reacher himself spends far too much time on the kind …
HollywoodandFine.com You’ve no doubt heard about a little movie called “Zero Dark Thirty,” which suddenly is the controversial odds-on Oscar favorite. The controversy has to do with a couple of scenes of torture – or “harsh interrogation techniques,” as the Orwellian Bush-era new-speak had it. They occur early in the …
HollywoodandFine.com Pity poor Toby Jones. A few years ago, he got what he probably thought was the role of a lifetime, playing Truman Capote in “Infamous,” a movie about the writing of “In Cold Blood.” Then Philip Seymour Hoffman swooped in playing the title role in Bennett Miller’s “Capote,” winning …
HollywoodandFine.com The commercials for “Flight” are a dazzling bit of bait-and-switch. If you’ve seen them, then your impression of the film is probably something along the lines of: A pilot saves an airliner from a seemingly certain crash, then must fight for his reputation against dark forces that want to …
HollywoodandFine.com Sex is a magnetic force, one that attracts and repels with equal force. Those impulses can be electrifying or awkward, drawing us desperately while tripping us up regularly. To make it even more difficult, this primal bit of attraction comes freighted with teachings about morality, religion and hygiene. Now …
HollywoodandFine.com It used to be that Disney would rerelease its old animated features on a regular schedule into theaters, reaching a new audience every decade or so with sure-fire quality entertainment that made parents cheer and kept kids entertained. That equation was upset with the rise of home video – …
HollywoodandFine.com “Why Stop Now” boasts such a diverse cast of recognizable faces that you have to wonder where it all went wrong. A strange blend of comedy and drama that never quite jells, the film was cowritten and codirected by Ron Nyswaner (an Oscar nominee for “Philadelphia”) and newcomer Phil …
HollywoodandFine.com A South American director once observed to me that everything was political. He was referring to entertainment in general, more specifically the films that Hollywood chooses to make, even when they seemingly have nothing to do with politics – because that, in itself, is a political choice. That’s still …
HollywoodandFine.com Nominated for the Oscar as best animated feature (which went to the visually brilliant but drastically unfunny “Rango”), “A Cat in Paris” is a slight but entertaining tale, most noteworthy for going old-school, with hand-drawn animation. Directed by Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol from a script by Gagnol, this …