HollywoodandFine.com You shouldn’t see “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” on an empty stomach. Indeed, you should have sushi in ready proximity once you have seen this fascinating look at the world’s greatest sushi chef. And it better be good. Directed by David Gelb,”Jiro Dreams of Sushi” is a documentary portrait of …
HollywoodandFine.com I’d probably seen the placard on the side of New York city buses a half-dozen times – the one for “John Carter” in which what appear to be two giant, eye-less, four-armed apes are shown against an orange background with “John Carter” in big capitals – before I actually …
HollywoodandFine.com I don’t think there was a movie at last fall’s Toronto Film Festival (or New York after that) that thrilled me in the same way that “Footnote” did. Joseph Cedar’s film, about a family of academics, creates a tension that squeezes laughs out of the audience. It’s the kind …
HollywoodandFine.com Writer-director Taika Waititi may be the founder of his own school of humor: call it “cruel-reality” comedy, Kiwi division, as practiced in his film, “Eagle vs. Shark,” and now his semi-autobiographical “Boy.” Told from the first-person perspective of the title character, “Boy” is the story of what happens one …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s unfortunate but understandable that they had to change the name of Nick Flynn’s memoir, “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City,” to the more TV-ready title “Being Flynn.” If only they could have made it into an interesting tale, instead of a movie about miserable people making each other …
HollywoodandFine.com You know that feeling when a comedy has just elicited an unexpected howl of laughter from you? The kind that has you momentarily breathless from the sheer pleasurable violence of it? Well, that’s not something you’ll experience while watching David Wain’s “Wanderlust,” a movie that really wants to make …
HollywoodandFine.com Does heroism translate from real-life to the big screen? Not really, as it turns out. Oh sure, Johnny Weismuller was an Olympic hero – and he turned that into big-screen career playing Tarzan. On the other hand, Audie Murphy, a real-life World War II hero, played a civil-war soldier …
HollywoodandFine.com Films remind us of how far we’ve come as a society – as well as the opposite. We are, after all, in the 21st century, a time of virtually instant communication and any manner of futuristic devices that differentiate us from, say, our ancestors in the Middle Ages, or …
HollywoodandFine.com There’s nothing wrong with “This Means War” that a humor-transplant couldn’t cure. Granted, romantic comedy is the hardest kind of comedy to pull off, especially when that romcom also wants to be an action-thriller. But director McG – who is like a less grandiose version of Michael Bay – …
HollywoodandFine.com An Oscar nominee as best documentary, “Undefeated” is a sports film that’s less about football than it is about a coach, his players and the journey they take together. And it’s a terrific trip. Their team is the Manassas Tigers, a high school football squad in North Memphis, in …