Columns By Leonard KladyKlady@moviecitynews.com
Friday Estimates: May 4, 2012
“The Avengers” is out of the gate with with a Hulk-sized opening. Estimates put “The Avengers” at number two on the list of all-time opening days at the box office – behind “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part II” and the first “Twilight” movie.
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: W.E., Haywire, Theatre Bizarre, Circus Columbia… More
If “Haywire” hadn’t been entrusted to director Steven Soderbergh and writer Lem Dobbs – also responsible for “The Limey” – it might have lacked the class, polish and velocity to prevent it from going straight to DVD.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Scarlet Street
Lang‘s personal favorite of all his American movies (his favorite among his German films was M), Scarlet Street pulls us into that special noir world we recognize from the other great dark hard-boiled, high-style masterpieces of the ‘40s: Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, the 1946 The Killers, Out of the Past, Laura, Detour, Criss Cross, Phantom Lady, Raw Deal, Caught, T-Men, Gun Crazy, Force of Evil, and The Maltese Falcon — a world of shadowy buildings and glistening, rain-slickened streets, of hot jazz wailing in an after-hours bar or a seething dance hall, of sultry dames with low-cut dresses and inviting eyes, of cynical hard-guys wearing rain coats and tipped fedoras, cigarettes drooping from their lips and guns clenched in their pockets, of killers to whom slaughter is just a job, nothing personal, and of maniacs and psychos for whom it’s very personal indeed.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: New Year’s Eve; Joyful Noise; Pillow Talk
This huge, lewd, sparkly 1959 hit –the first in the Rock Hudson-Doris Day movie series — has fun with serial seduction, sex mania, telephone party lines, Manhattan careerism, intimations of gayness, bedroom and bathroom gags on split screens (watch Rock’s toe in the bathtub scene), and other American erotic/cinematic peculiarities.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: The Five-Year Engagement
Most of the things that go wrong with most Hollywood romantic comedies, are done right here. “The Five-Year Engagement” isn’t a glamorous showcase for a bunch of glam-kids trading double-entendres, but an honest (but also funny) investigation into modern relationships and their quirks and pitfalls. The cast is a first-class, heavy-duty comic ensemble, and the genuinely amusing script has lots of good moments for lots of funny people.
Read the full article »The Weekend Report
Cusp of summer box office experienced a lull with weekend revenues of roughly $115 million that amounted to a 17% decline from the prior frame. It was a steeper 30% downturn from 2011 when the bow of Fast Five blew away the competition with an $86.1 million launch. The weekend’s big noise was happening overseas with The Avengers getting a jump start on domestic with a 39 territory debut estimated at close to $180 million. Also heaping up advance gelt internationally is Battleship with $150 million to date prior to its North American bow on 5/18.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: The Raven
But wait a minute. This isn’t the kind of horror that puts money in your pockets. A loser roaming the streets and expiring in a hospital? Not in our bottom-line, money-obsessed, failure-hating age. Let’s imagine something more horrible — and certainly more modern, more suitable to contemporary tastes.
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Contraband, Camelot, Return, Young Goethe, Innkeepers, Hollis Frampton … More
Like JFK’s legacy, the movie version of “Camelot” hasn’t aged well in the succeeding nearly 50 years. In fact, after knocking ’em dead on Broadway in the early 1960s, the movie version failed to overwhelm Oscar voters or attract nearly the same number of fans as “My Fair Lady.”
Read the full article »Picturing Ebertfest 2012 Day 2
Edifices, blue skies, books for sale, karaoke, Life Itself…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Headhunters
Slick and fast and gorgeously shot—if sometimes almost criminally over-the-top.
Read the full article »Picturing Ebertfest 2012
Looking at opening day and night of the 14th annual Roger Ebert’s Film Festival, Champaign, Illinois, March 25, 2012.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Godzilla
I’ve never visited Japan, and probably I never will. But if I get there, I know I’ll dream of seeing several things, all of which, to me, signify “Japanese cinema“ and “Japan.” A furious Kurosawa swordfight caught by three cameras. Two Ozu characters sitting on tatami mats, musing on the sadness of life. A geisha or wife suffering while Mizoguchi’s camera tracks slowly and beautifully around her. Something tragic or transgressive caught lucidly by Ichikawa or Imamura. And, rising up from the ocean, while the sun sets, Honda’s Godzilla (excuse me, Gojira), staring toward Tokyo and licking his chops.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. The Innkeepers
Ti West’s movie is loaded with seedy atmosphere and cracked wacko personality, and I much preferred it to the over-expensive blood-drenched massacres they usually give us. Paxton’s Claire and Healy’s Luke are engagingly scarable protagonists. The cellar is a doozy.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Darling Companion
The movie has its flaws — that outlandishly implausible ending chiefly among them — but compared to most of the un-naturalistic, unfunny, unserious, totally phony and sometimes obnoxiously ageist and condescendingly smart-ass gloppy stuff that often passes for American movie comedy-drama these days (and that sometimes gets a pass from the same people who pile on movies like “Darling Companion”), it’s a movie that deserves some encouragement.
Read the full article »The Weekend Report: April 22, 2012
“The Hunger Games” finally moved out of the top spot to make room for newcomers “Think Like a Man” and Zac Efron’s “The Lucky One,” both performing better than expected. Disney’s nature doc “Chimpanzee” turned in a respectable fourth with $10.2 million.
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Ghost Protocol, Shame, Last Rites of Joe May… More
Even if “Shame” doesn’t offer many answers and fewer resolutions, it can’t be said that we don’t know these people after 101 minutes in their presence. It feels like a fully realized short story or novella. The acting is terrific and McQueen’s direction delivers a real punch. It’s not an easy movie to watch, though, so viewers not looking for a challenge may want to think twice before renting it.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. A Streetcar Named Desire
The young Adonis-like Brando was the actor whom critics and Britons believed would be the American stage and screen’s great Hamlet. (But he never even tried.) He was the player for whom Tennessee Williams wrote play after play year after year. (But Brando turned them all down, except for the Sidney Lumet movie of “Orpheus Descending,” retitled “The Fugitive Kind)”.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Shame
I can’t recall a single smile crossing Brandon’s mouth, or a single joke passing his lips (if there were, they were lonely), or much tenderness at all, during the course of the movie.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
This is the best action movie out this year not just because it has the best action, but because the characters are interesting too.
Read the full article »DVD Geek: The Magnificent Ambersons
Exactly 15 years after DVDs were introduced to the home video market place, Warner Home Video has finally released the last significantly important, classic motion picture in the format, “The Magnificent Ambersons,” and like the opinions of the townspeople on the fates of the characters at the end of the film, no one cares.
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