HollywoodandFine.com Having been mentioned as an Oscar contender for 2013, George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men” was abruptly bumped from awards season to this week because, according to the press release, Clooney needed more time to finish it. So its release was moved to February, a month whose releases are seldom …
HollywoodandFine.com I’ll admit that, during moments in “The Lego Movie,” my mouth was hanging open at the audacity and imagination of the images I was seeing. I also found myself laughing a lot more than I thought I would. Written and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who did …
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 Hirokazu Koreeda’s “Like Father, Like Son” is a delicate but daunting tale, one whose quietly self-contained story manages to churn great waves of emotional complexity. The set-up is a popular literary and cinematic plot contrivance: the switched-at-birth trope. But it is acted out in movingly stark relief in this …
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 …