HollywoodandFine.com I rarely take notes during movies, but when the pretentious aphorisms started flying in David Cronenberg’s “Cosmopolis,” I dove for my notebook. I missed a few of the early ones, but managed to scribble down several of the ripest, most ridiculous pronouncements, starting with: “Life is too contemporary.” Or …
HollywoodandFine.com In her follow-up to “2 Days in Paris,” actress-filmmaker Julie Delpy moves her focus across the Atlantic and switches leading men – from Adam Goldberg to Chris Rock. The result is another shaggy, discursive and amusing film – long on character, short on plot, full of sly observations about …
HollywoodandFine.com It used to be that a movie that celebrated the use of marijuana was considered shocking, scandalous, unacceptable and inappropriate. To some people, it probably still is. These days, smoking weed is a staple in popular entertainment – not just as a cheap punchline but as a regular story …
HollywoodandFine.com Tony Gilroy is the smartest, most intriguing screenwriter since William Goldman was in his heyday. In a variety of films – including his own “Michael Clayton” and “Duplicity” – Gilroy has demonstrated both a toughness and a cleverness that few contemporary screenwriters possess. He comes through again with “The …
HollywoodandFine.com Here’s why I’d almost be willing to give “The Campaign” a pass on the fact that it’s sloppy, inconsistent and only intermittently funny: Because it takes a populist form like a Will Ferrell movie and makes sharp-edged digs (for a Will Ferrell movie) at a political system that’s in …
HollywoodandFine.com The commercials make “Hope Springs” look like some sort of mildly naughty sex comedy about an uptight older-middle-aged couple who rediscover the joys of sex through couples’ therapy. With Steve Carell – that wacky guy! – as the therapist. And the ads trumpet the fact that it’s from “the …
HollywoodandFine.com At about the halfway point in the new remake of “Total Recall,” I thought, “Wow, this is pretty good.” But pretty good is all it managed. Though Len Wiseman’s reworking of Philip K. Dick’s story (and the 1990 Paul Verhoeven/Arnold Schwarzenegger film that was extrapolated from it) comes up …
HollywoodandFine.com The second film of the summer inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s “La Ronde,” Fernando Mereilles’ “360” is an intriguing jigsaw puzzle of a movie, less schematic than Schnitzler’s play (or “30 Beats,” the dreadful film of a couple weeks ago). Still, it’s more interesting for its individual pieces than what …
HollywoodandFine.com America’s love affair with the stars of big business should have come to an end with the greed-driven crash of our financial system in 2008. Yet, somehow, Donald Trump remains not just a celebrity but one who was actually considered seriously as a presidential candidate – for about a …
HollywoodandFine.com I was recently asked what I thought of the Kristen Stewart situation. To which I responded, quite honestly, that I didn’t. Ever. Not even for a second. Sure, I’d seen the headlines, which told me everything I needed to know: that she’d been caught having an affair with a …