HollywoodandFine.com I’ve been a fan of Spike Lee – if not of all of his movies – for 25 years. And I’ve found that, more often than not, he’s at his best when he’s directing someone else’s material – or someone else’s story. It was true of “The 25th Hour,” …
By Armond White Unlike David Fincher’s The Social Network, which burnished the legend of Mark Zuckerberg founding Facebook while glamourizing the modern derangement of social values and personal relations, Chen Kaige gets directly to the social, spiritual point in his masterly new film Caught in the Web. Chen balances a …
HollywoodandFine.com Is Jason Statham the new Sylvester Stallone? I’d always imagined him as the new Steve McQueen. But Stallone took this script down off the shelf, taking credits as writer and producer on “Homefront” for his “Expendables” costar. It’s not hard to imagine it with Stallone playing the central character, …
HollywoodandFine.com I’ll admit that I was surprised when Jacob Latimore burst into song early into Kasi Lemmons’ “Black Nativity.” I went into the screening having only the vaguest knowledge of the cast and the director, and no one had mentioned that it was a musical. But I came out a …
HollywoodandFine.com There were a handful of towering figures in social-justice movements of the 20th century – people who spearheaded a liberation movement in the name of a principle, at great cost to themselves. Gandhi comes to mind, along with Martin Luther King Jr. But my list would be topped by …
By Armond White Funny how The Hunger Games franchise pretends to deal with political demogoguery but really just gives audiences dumbed-down Bread-and-Circuses–the standard millennial trap. By the time Philip Seymour Hoffman enters The Hunger Games: Catching Fire with his usual post-Oscar smugness, viewers are so worn out from the brackish …
HollywoodandFine.com Disney has had such a long winning streak with its animated comedies and musicals that it’s almost possible to forgive the problems with “Frozen,” which opens in Los Angeles today and in wide release on Nov. 27. Indeed, there’s not a lot wrong with “Frozen”: The animation is state-of-the-art, …
HollywoodandFine.com I was a fan of Ken Scott’s Canadian comedy, “Starbuck,” when it reached American screens earlier this year. It’s a film that managed to be witty, surprising and soulful, all at the same time. I recall clearly checking its page on IMDB after I watched it, to find out …
HollywoodandFine.com There’s not much to say about “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” because it does what it’s supposed to. The sequel to last year’s hit, this second installment of what was a trilogy of books (but which will be a quartet of films) is directed by Francis Lawrence (the original …
HollywoodandFine.com Lists of the greatest this or the best that are provocations and nothing more. Whether it’s a critic offering his 10-best list of films (or books or TV shows or albums) for a given year or decade or an organization or website doing the same thing, it’s always a …
