HollywoodandFine.com The marvelous Scottish actor Robert Carlyle has been a fixture in films large and small for 20-plus years, but no one has written a part for him that gives him the chance to show his range the way Marshall Lewy has in “California Solo” (opening in limited release Friday, …
HollywoodandFine.com John Milius’ “Red Dawn,” released in 1984, was a simplistic, militaristic rabble-rouser of a film, a Reagan-era Cold War relic that offered lots of rah-rah about how mighty the United States fighting spirit was, even when its military was taken out of the picture. It looked silly and dated …
HollywoodandFine.com A fascinating fable about the meaning of both faith and fate, “Life of Pi” is a wonderfully visual telling of a Yann Martel’s best-selling and award-winning novel. Director Ang Lee raises the bar on digital imagery, even as he puts it in service to his story. He’s also one …
HollywoodandFine.com The visual trickery will catch your attention – but it’s the performance behind it that will hold you and move you in Jacques Audiard’s “Rust and Bone,” opening Wednesday (11/21/12) in limited release. The director of the harrowing “Un Prophete” – with its gritty violence and interracial tensions in …
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 heart wants what the heart wants, as Woody Allen so famously said. That’s not news to the writers of tragic fiction. Misplaced affection – or the death of one love at the birth of another – is the bedrock of classic tales as diverse as “An American Tragedy” …
HollywoodandFine.com Feel-good movies about people with mental disorders – from “As Good As It Gets” to “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” and beyond – face the same challenge. They have to take the psychological issues they deal with – depression, OCD, bipolar disorder – seriously enough to avoid trivializing …
HollywoodandFine.com It has been years – at least since Zoe Cassavetes’ underseen “Broken English” and perhaps since she burst on to the scene in the early 1990s – since Parker Posey has had a role as meaty and perfect for her as Susan Felders in Michael Walker’s “Price Check.” Walker’s …
HollywoodandFine.com Enlightenment, as we learned this week, is a two-way street. Or, as Dorothy Parker once said, you can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think. Lest you think that we are living in a unique period in history – with half the country believing in angels but …
HollywoodandFine.com “Starlet,” opening Friday (11/9/12) in limited release, may be one of the year’s most surprising little movies, a tough-minded, low-budget tale that never quite leads you where it seems to be going. Not that where it’s going is somewhere you’d choose for yourself. But writer-director Sean Baker hooks you …