HollywoodandFine.com “To the Arctic,” like the cable series “Frozen Planet” and other films of the type, provides a precious historical record. At some point in the future, as man-made climate change raises global temperatures and causes the polar ice caps to melt even faster, we will no longer have species …
HollywoodandFine.com A film that took more than four years and an extravagant amount of luck to make, “Chimpanzee” is an exceptional wildlife movie that should hold the interest of viewers from youngest to oldest. Shot in the jungles of Africa, this film by directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield focuses …
HollywoodandFine.com What can we learn from “Fightville,” a documentary from the team that made “Gunners Palace” about a minor-league circuit of professional mixed-martial arts fighting? The obvious takeaway from this film by Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker is that life within this sport of violence has tamed the beast within …
HollywoodandFine.com There haven’t been many movies based on the books by Nicholas Sparks that are much easier to swallow than Sparks’ prose. But a good director with a creative screenwriter can distill a touching romance out of even Sparks’ overblown best-sellers. Indeed, I’m sure there are those who will be …
HollywoodandFine.com To the canon of films about the financial collapse of 2008, add Marc Simon’s “Unraveled,” a portrait of one man’s hubris, insecurity and appetite for glory, writ large. That man is Marc Dreier, arrested at the end of 2008 for a massive financial fraud but overshadowed in the headlines …
HollywoodandFine.com “How to Grow a Band” is a perfect example of a missed opportunity: a front-row seat at the creation of a new artistic venture, in a film that never does more than skim the surface. Director Mark Meatto apparently had exceptional access to superstar bluegrass mandolinist Chris Thile (pronounced …
HollywoodandFine.com In “Lockout,” we have a prison-escape film that features an actor in search of literal escape – from this film. As fun and wisecracky as Guy Pearce gets, as a former CIA agent named Snow, his eyes betray a “get me out of this POS” franticness that’s impossible to …
HollywoodandFine.com If you think you’ve seen “The Cabin in the Woods” before, well, you’re half-right. You’ve definitely seen movies along the same lines. But I’d also wager that you’ve never seen anything like it. Directed by Drew Goddard from a script by Goddard and Joss Whedon, “The Cabin in the …
HollywoodandFine.com A film with both documentary urgency and an overwrought sense of melodrama, “The Assault” is a dramatization of a real-life airline hijacking from 1994. The actual events occurred in Algiers, when hijackers, demanding the release of Algerian prisoners in France, grabbed an airplane in Algiers and demanded that it …
HollywoodandFine.com “American Reunion” is like a movie that’s become a zombie: a franchise that has risen from the grave of straight-to-video sequels to bring back the no-longer-youthful original cast for one more (hopefully lucrative) go-round. The stench of desperation permeates this film, a sequel to the 1999 gross-out hit and …