HollywoodandFine.com When I saw Bennett Miller’s “Foxcatcher” at the Toronto Film Festival in September, I wrote that “Miller, in my estimation, has jumped into the class of Steven Soderbergh and other great directors of the past 25 years (who don’t worship at the Tarantino altar).” Not that I’ve got anything …
HollywoodandFine.com No good deed goes unpunished in Tommy Lee Jones’ “The Homesman.” And that’s how the West was won. Punishment is a running theme in this film, which Lee and two writing partners adapted from a novel by Glendon Swarthout. Lee directed the film, and plays a central character: George …
HollywoodandFine.com Romantic dramas seem to be few and far between these days. So it’s both refreshing and encouraging to see one as good as Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “Beyond the Lights.” It’s an area she has mined in the past, in films like “Love & Basketball” and “The Secret Life of Bees.” …
Hollywoodandfine.com There are so many movies released every Friday that no single critic has a prayer of seeing them all. But as it happens this week, I’ve seen several that deserve comment, if only briefly. Let’s start with “The Theory of Everything,” which some are touting as an Oscar contender. …
HollywoodandFine.com The same Disney folks that brought you “Bolt,” “The Emperor’s New Groove” and “The Princess and the Frog” return with “Big Hero 6,” a wildly imaginative action-comedy about super-tech-savvy kids somewhere in the near future. Set in San Francisco (rechristened San Fransokyo for reasons that are implied but unexplained), …
HollywoodandFine.com Christopher Nolan’s philosophy of filmmaking apparently is this: Why make one movie when you can make three? Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. “Interstellar” works much more often than it doesn’t. While the script by Nolan and his brother Jonathan wants to traffic in ideals and ideas about gravity, …
HollywoodandFine.com TV news has long since surpassed the excesses that seemed far-fetched in Paddy Chayefsky’s “Network” almost 40 years ago. Indeed, what’s shocking about Dan Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler” is how not shocking it is – while still being a rousing and visionary piece of work. In depicting the world of local …
HollywoodandFine.com Only serious jazz fans remember Joe Albany, a pianist whose bright and energetic attack kept him working until his death in 1988. “Low Down,” based on a memoir by his daughter, Amy, feels hackneyed, despite being a true story. It struggles to be something more than the tale of …
HollywoodandFine.com Everyone, at some point, wonders how they would react to a split-second emergency. Fight or flight? Leap into action or race for the exit? Or simply crumble? That’s the question at the center of the wickedly chilly “Force Majeure,” a movie about a momentary decision that may lead to …
HollywoodandFine.com What is most astonishing, as you watch Laura Poitras’ “Citizenfour,” is how calm everyone is. At least at first. The next most astonishing thing? How quietly rational all these people are, particularly considering the volcano of invective that their actions would unleash against them. These people are, really, one …