HollywoodandFine.com Jon Kasdan’s “The First Time” captures one of those moments in life when you only hope you have the presence of mind to absorb every detail so that you can savor it later. It’s that moment when you were in exactly the right place at the right time to …
HollywoodandFine.com I’ll admit I’m a sucker for Martin McDonagh’s work. I’m a fan of his plays and loved his first feature, “In Bruges.” And I’m just as excited about his new film, “Seven Psychopaths,” perhaps the movie that forces you to laugh at more inappropriate moments than any film in …
HollywoodandFine.com The best films about recovery from addiction are not about reaching rock bottom and making that choice to stop. Rather, like “Smashed,” they’re about the very real and difficult task of going on, in an emotionally unshielded and intensely vulnerable way. Addiction, after all, isn’t about loving the substance …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s a little early to be proclaiming Ben Affleck’s “Argo” the best movie of the year – but one of the best? No question. Among the films I saw at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, it was the most exciting and engrossing. And I can’t think of anything I’ve …
HollywoodandFine.com Quiet but compelling, emotionally buttoned-up and naked at the same time, Ava DuVernay’s “Middle of Nowhere,” opening in limited release Friday (10/12/12), is a film about holding still while trying to move forward. It’s not an easy trick; indeed, it’s impossible. Which is what the film’s central character, Ruby …
HollywoodandFine.com How much bad luck can one family have? Enough for a hit movie – “Taken” – and what I assume the makers hope is a hit sequel: “Taken 2.” “Taken” starred Liam Neeson as Brian Mills, a security expert and former special-ops guy whose daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) is …
HollywoodandFine.com I’m not one who worships at the altar of Tim Burton, probably disliking his films as often as I am moved by them. For every effort as emotionally rich as “Sweeney Todd,” there’s something as flat and wankish as “Dark Shadows.” But I fell hard for “Frankenweenie,” an extrapolation …
HollywoodandFine.com Would “Butter” be a funnier movie if Michele Bachmann were still at the center of the American political conversation? Of course not. Bachmann is her own perpetual punchline, more extreme and ridiculous than any satirist’s imagination. If you wrote her as a character, she would be unbelievable. Her truth …
HollywoodandFine.com Lee Daniels received all sorts of accolades for 2009’s “Precious,” which seemed to announce a fiery new filmmaking talent. But the real indicator of Daniels’ sensibility may actually be 2005’s “Shadowboxer,” an overwrought and preposterous tale of professional killers (Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr.) who also happen to …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s one thing when documentaries like Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for ‘Superman’” and Madeleine Sackler’s much better “The Lottery” look at problems in public education and offer some solutions (such as charter schools). It’s something else when a manipulative drama like “Won’t Back Down” tries to lay the blame for …