HollywoodandFine.com When I saw Bennett Miller’s “Foxcatcher” at the Toronto Film Festival in September, I wrote that “Miller, in my estimation, has jumped into the class of Steven Soderbergh and other great directors of the past 25 years (who don’t worship at the Tarantino altar).” Not that I’ve got anything …
HollywoodandFine.com Ahhh yes, the zombie apocalypse – that moment when the dead rise and, by biting the living, turn them into zombies as well. Some theorize that Patient Zero was Ronald Reagan. Before long, there’s an unorganized zombie army meandering around the streets, chomping on any unfortunate warm-blooded soul who …
HollywoodandFine.com This was originally going to be a piece about how wrong it was for Will Smith to remake “The Wild Bunch.” But that metastasized into an idea about remakes and reboots in general. So I wound up simply writing an open letter to Smith about “The Wild Bunch” – …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s rare that a filmmaker has more than one film out in a single year, unless they’re either making both features and documentaries – or they’re Steven Soderbergh. But Alex Karpovsky actually has two films out the same day: “Red Flag” and “Rubberneck.” They’re being released as a double-feature …
HollywoodandFine.com Dear Steven Soderbergh: Please don’t stop making movies. Your name is high on the list of filmmakers whose careers I’m thankful have coincided with my career as a movie critic. And “Side Effects” is further proof that you are at the height of your powers as a filmmaker. There’s …
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 “Side by Side” should be required viewing in any film school worth its salt and, undoubtedly, will be. But as up-to-the-minute as it is, by next year, it undoubtedly will be dated. And, before long, it will be a curiosity. Why? Because director Christopher Kenneally goes directly at the …
HollywoodandFine.com David Mackenzie’s “Perfect Sense” is an end-of-the-world romance in which the world disappears incrementally. Being involved in this velvet apocalypse is a little like being the Cheshire cat, unable to control which part of you will disappear next. Like Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” and Fernando Meirelles’ “Blindness,” Mackenzie’s cataclysm comes …
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 It’s not that I don’t think David Fincher is a solid director. But I don’t think he’s the Second Coming either, though some of the reviews he tends to get would have you believe otherwise. What finally tore it was his version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” …