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 …
HollywoodandFine.com Occasionally, two studios make the same movie and then try to be the first to release their version. It’s less common for the same year to produce two different films with almost identical storylines. But then, the plot for “Pitch Perfect” was old long before this year. So it’s …
HollywoodandFine.com Rian Johnson went dark noir via teen angst in his breakout film, “Brick,” then got all Wes Anderson in “The Brothers Bloom.” Now, with “Looper,” he thinks big – or, at least, bigger, going futuristic sci-fi. But he treats the material as a crime-fiction saga, rather than a special-effects …
HollywoodandFine.com As you get older, it’s easy to forget that age when every moment of life seemed fraught with all possible feelings at the most dramatic levels. Life and death seemed to hang in the balance with each step you took, each encounter you had, each moment you spent, each …
HollywoodandFine.com OK, here’s a promise: No jokes or puns based on the title of “Dredd 3D.” Fish in a barrel and all that. Not that there’s much that’s memorable about Pete Travis’ reboot of a moribund movie franchise based on what is, by now, sort of a classic comic book. …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s a Chekhovian truism that if you introduce a gun in the first act, it had better go off before the end of the play. That apparently didn’t register with David Ayer, who wrote and directed “End of Watch,” a competent but unremarkable new cops-on-the-streets tale starring Jake Gyllenhaal …
HollywoodandFine.com Think of “Trouble with the Curve” as the anti-“Moneyball”: a movie that dismisses Billy Bean and Bill James’ data-centric approach to quantifying baseball talent, in favor of old-fashioned gut instinct. It’s also a clichéd and sentimental dramedy, in which the comedy is wan and the drama telegraphs itself like …
HollywoodandFine.com Quietly and unobtrusively, actor Josh Radnor is building himself a filmography of solidly made, unobtrusively sly and intelligent comedy. With 2010’s “Happythankyoumoreplease” (which had its flaws but also its pleasures) and now with “Liberal Arts” (open in limited release), Radnor proves that he knows a thing or two about …
HollywoodandFine.com It used to be that Disney would rerelease its old animated features on a regular schedule into theaters, reaching a new audience every decade or so with sure-fire quality entertainment that made parents cheer and kept kids entertained. That equation was upset with the rise of home video – …
HollywoodandFine.com It seems like an innocuous title – until you realize (or learn) that “The Manzanar Fishing Club,” a new documentary by Cory Shiozaki opening today in limited release, deals with one of this country’s most shameful chapters: the internment of Japanese citizens after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Shiozaki’s …