HollywoodandFine.com There’s a certain rowdy spirit to Stephen Gyllenhaal’s “Grassroots,” now playing in limited release, that gives the fact-based comedy-drama a surprising vitality for a movie that seems so schematic. Based on a true story, the film stars Jason Biggs as a journalist named Phil Campbell, who is fired from …
HollywoodandFine.com Gorgeously shot and acted with aching tragic truthfulness, Michael Winterbottom’s “Trishna” is a romance of depth and feeling. Part of that, of course, is the source material; Winterbottom, who also wrote the script, has transposed Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” to modern India, where class differences still hold …
HollywoodandFine.com When you first meet Lucy, played with bracing forthrightness by Mira Sorvino in Nancy Savoca’s “Union Square,” well, let’s just say she can only grow on you. Because Lucy is – or seems to be – a serious pain. She’s whiny, she’s needy and she’s abrasive without even trying …
HollywoodandFine.com “Crazy Eyes” was spawned by the same boozy mentality (and, sometimes, sentimentality) that has inspired the work of everyone from Dylan Thomas to Charles Bukowski. If Adam Sherman’s film, now in limited release, occasionally wobbles under the delusion that alcoholics are actually visionaries and their bad behavior comprises the …
HollywoodandFine.com Boys will be boys. Always. Testosterone may not confer eternal youth on the male of the species, but it does enforce perpetual juvenile traits that can never truly be bred out of men. These come to the fore in Jay and Mark Duplass’ “The Do-Deca-Pentathalon.” A shaggy, basic tale …
HollywoodandFine.com It took a Facebook communiqué from a friend, asking what I thought about “Savages,” for my thoughts to crystallize: “I was mixed,” I wrote. “Liked the action, thought the acting by the 3 heroes (and the writing for them) kind of sucked.” Which about sums it up. This film …
HollywoodandFine.com Spider-Man was an angsty teen that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created in “Amazing Fantasy” comics in August 1962 – a character that’s apparently a perfect fit for Andrew Garfield in “The Amazing Spider-Man.” Garfield sweeps aside memories of Tobey Maguire as the web-spinner. He captures the personality split …
HollywoodandFine.com Where do writers get their ideas? How do they go about putting words in other people’s mouths? To writers, it seems like an unanswerable question: It’s a compulsion, a need, an itch that needs to be scratched on a semi-regular basis. But the process seems like a mysterious one …
HollywoodandFine.com Pre-apocalyptic films tend to be thrillers: Yikes, the world is about to end – how can we escape or avert imminent disaster? But Lorene Scafaria’s “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” strikes a different chord: one that is wistfully romantic, a little melancholy and unexpectedly funny. …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s noteworthy that Disney/Pixar’s “Brave,” opening Friday (6/22/12), is the first Pixar feature – and the first Disney animated feature in a while – to focus on a heroine, rather than a hero. And not a heroine whose fate is somehow bound up with romance – that’s a crucial …