HollywoodandFine.com One of those movies that worked much better than it deserved to, 2010’s “Red” offered action that was smart, funny and well-cast enough to make you forget just how ordinary it really was. Unfortunately, its sequel, “Red 2” is a movie of a very different and unwelcome type: the …
HollywoodandFine.com Everything that I loved about Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 film, “Drive,” all the things that I found immediate and evocative – those are all the things that struck me as wrong-headed, self-indulgent and pretentious in his newest, already much-vilified “Only God Forgives.” Working once again with a nearly silent …
HollywoodandFine.com The older I get, the less interested I am in horror films, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the modern horror film has evolved into a choice between torture porn (violent and grisly for its own sake) and special-effects extravaganzas. Most of the horror I see (or …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s been four years since “The Cove” – and 20 years since “Free Willy.” And yet, as the upsetting new documentary, “Blackfish,” shows, man’s inhumanity to mammals continues unabated – as commercialized and heartless as ever, even when it includes collateral damage. That’s the story of “Blackfish,” a controversial …
HollywoodandFine.com I know people for whom watching Michael Cera act in anything is akin to nails on a blackboard – or even bamboo splinters under those fingernails. He’s the contraindication of an enjoyable film. For me, “Crystal Fairy” is further proof that Cera has a lot more range (and daring) …
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 In some ways, movies are about our childhood: about the dreams, fantasies, fears and hopes we saw reflected from our own lives on a big screen when we were at an impressionable age. So how much you enjoy Guillermo del Toro’s sprawling, exciting and exceptionally imaginative “Pacific Rim” may …
HollywoodandFine.com For years, I’ve read about the so-called “Black List” of screenplays: allegedly great scripts which, for some reason, Hollywood ignores because it would rather make dumb crap like “The Lone Ranger.” Then I see a movie like “Killing Season,” written by Evan Daugherty, a script billed as one of …
HollywoodandFine.com “Olympus Has Fallen” seemed like a front-runner to top year-end lists as one of 2013’s worst films. While it’s early enough in the year for another film to overtake it in the downhill race, it’s surprising to have that film be the second movie about a terrorist takeover of …
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 …