“Catching Fire” picks up where “The Hunger Games” left off. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) have returned home to District 12, triumphant but troubled. The pair’s impromptu final act of defiance at the 74th Annual Hunger games – their decision to commit double suicide by poison …
HollywoodandFine.com The past, as William Faulkner famously wrote, “is never dead. It’s not even past.” Or, as Paul Thomas Anderson said in his film “Magnolia,” “We may be through with the past – but the past ain’t through with us.” That’s a lesson the Catholic Church seems to learn repeatedly. …
By Armond White How do you tell Ron Woodroof’s story so that it is both informative and enlightening? Woodroof, a not-altruistic Texas shitkicker who drank, drugged, chased tail and conned people, contracted AIDS in the mid-80s then became a self-made entrepreneur. He rejected the prescribed drug AZT (a prophetic decision), …
HollywoodandFine.com Fredrik Bond’s “Charlie Countryman” is an intriguing directorial debut: a blend of the madcap and the maniacal, a movie that mixes tones in ways that shouldn’t work but do. In that sense, it calls to mind a couple of other films: Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” and Jonathan Demme’s “Something …
HollywoodandFine.com In one sense, actor Bruce Dern is an interviewer’s dream: He’s pithy, quotable and voluble. In another sense, Dern is an interviewer’s nightmare: You ask one question and never get the chance to ask another, because he’s got so much to say. That’s tough, particularly given the time strictures …
By Armond White If Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte opened today, it would be the best film of 2013–and the most relevant. Though originally released in 1962, Antonioni’s masterpiece speaks to the crisis of affluence and license that also describes our contemporary social conundrum where the acceptance of capitalist privilege (and …
HollywoodandFine.com Amir Bar-Lev and Charlie Lightening’s new film, “12-12-12” would be worth seeing if only for the moment where James Dolan loses his temper because of a technical glitch. Any New York Knicks fan can offer a laundry list of Dolan’s contumelies as the team’s owner. He’s one of those …
HollywoodandFine.com It’s interesting to see the way filmmakers stake out certain emotional territory as their own over the course of a career. Steven Spielberg is consumed with the notion of wonder, though he obviously has more arrows than that in his quiver. Martin Scorsese, in his own heaven/hell construct, seems …
HollywoodandFine.com I have to ask: When religious conservatives – or those with otherwise delicate sensibilities – hear the word “fuck” uttered in a movie, what happens? Do their ears start to bleed – or fall off? Does food suddenly stop tasting good and joy cease to exist? Do they feel …
HollywoodandFine.com Hayao Miyazaki has been a critical darling as an animator almost since his films started being imported to the U.S. He’s been hailed as a master and even given an Oscar for “Spirited Away.” Having announced his retirement, he’s made one final feature: “The Wind Rises,” which is getting …
