HollywoodandFine.com The two most disappointing films of the season should have been two of the most gripping: “Unbroken” (also opening on Christmas) and Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper,” Eastwood’s second misfire of the year (after the deadly “Jersey Boys”). The film is based on the memoir by former SEAL sniper Chris …
HollywoodandFine.com At heart, “Big Eyes” is a just a drama about a codependent relationship that strays into abusiveness, in which the wife finally finds the strength to walk away from a domineering husband. Except that Tim Burton’s latest film is about the marriage of Walter and Margaret Keane, a pair …
HollywoodandFine.com I bristle whenever Hollywood decides that it’s time to remake a film from the recent past (although, with a history of cinema that only extends a little over 100 years, it’s ALL the recent past). OK, so I bristle at all remakes – continuing evidence of the death of …
HollywoodandFine.com Ava Duvernay’s “Selma” couldn’t be more timely. Duvernay’s film (about the voting-rights demonstrations and protests of 1965) depicts black men and women standing up for their rights as citizens of the United States of America. You can’t help but be saddened by just how closely these demonstrations – and …
HollywoodandFine.com And so it comes to an end – again. Some might argue that, having taken the dense “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and condensed it into three monumental films, Peter Jackson should have had no trouble turning “The Hobbit” into an equally enjoyable and involving one-off. Guess again. The …
HollywoodandFine.com Had he been born in a different time and place, painter J.M.W. Turner might have been a member of the Hudson River School, a group of artists who worked in the second half of the 19th century, after Turner’s 1851 death. Like those painters, Turner was a master of …
HollywoodandFine.com I was engaged for the first hour of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” – and frustrated into raging impatience by the final 90 minutes. So – 40 percent? Not a passing grade. “Inherent Vice” squanders a strong start in an orgy of wheel-spinning. Perhaps Anderson is indulging himself with …
HollywoodandFine.com Based on the memoir by Cheryl Strayed, Jean-Marc Vallee’s “Wild” offers an exceptional visual version of what could have been largely an interior journey. Indeed, Strayed herself refers to her three-month hike on the Pacific Crest Trail as a journey to find herself. It doesn’t get much more interior …
HollywoodandFine.com Marriage changes everything, whether you’re the one getting married or the best friend watching your pal coupling up with someone else. What happens to a certain kind of codependent friendship when one member finds a significant other? “Life Partners,” the first film by Susanna Fogel, would like to answer …
HollywoodandFine.com To my mind, “The Imitation Game” is the best film of the year: a gripping tale of wartime espionage and code-breaking that also manages to be the character study of an important figure whose contributions have been ignominiously ignored. Morten Tyldum’s film tells the story of Alan Turing, played …