Wilmington By Mike WilmingtonWilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on Movies: It’s Complicated, The Lovely Bones, Nine, Police – Adjective, Did You Hear About the Morgans?
It’s Complicated (Three Stars) U.S.; Nancy Meyers, 2009 It’s Complicated tries to show that age cannot wither, nor custom stale, even in Santa Barbara, with Meryl Streep making croissants, Alec Baldwin undergoing fertility tests and some funny smoke in the air. The movie costars Streep as a happy baker who’s lived too long unmarried, Baldwin…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: THE TEN BEST
Here are my choices for the ten best DVD and DVD box sets (plus a few runners-up) for 2009, last year of the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Sherlock Holmes, Into Temptation
Sherlock Holmes (Three Stars) U.S.; Guy Ritchie, 2009 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fog-bound, spellbinding adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson were among the magical books of my childhood. The game’s afoot! “Elementary, my dear Watson.” The curious incident of the dog in the night-time. I even invented my own counterfeit Holmes and Watson…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Avatar, Princess & the Frog, The Young Victoria
Avatar (Four Stars) U.S.; James Cameron, 2009 Avatar, James Cameron’s planet-shaking, moon-rocking, eco-worshipping, dragon-riding new science fiction fantasy epic-and-a-half, may not be a perfect movie. But it’s sure as hell an incredible experience. It’s a genre-movie knockout, a cinematic mind-blast and a technological marvel whose feats of 3D motion-capture and CGI pyrotechnics, and the…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Inglourious Basterds, The Hangover, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 500 Days of Summer and more…
Inglourious Basterds (Three and a Half Stars) U. S.; Quentin Tarantino, 2009 (Universal) Quentin Tarantino shoots the works in Inglorious Basterds, a wild movie-movie-lover’s blend of WW2 action film pyrotechnics, subtitled art cinema romance, inside-movie allusions of every type and description, grand spaghetti-operatic Sergio Leone stylistics, and a brash Let’s-rewrite-World War 2-and make-it-a-De Palma flick…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Invictus, Brothers, The Messenger
Invictus (Four Stars) U.S.; Clint Eastwood, 2009 I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. Those are the stirring last words of William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus,” the British poem from which black political prisoner and Apartheid foe Nelson Mandela took heart during his 27 years in South African prisons…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Julie and Julia, The Hangover, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 500 Days of Summer and more…
Julie and Julia (Three Stars) U. S.; Nora Ephron, 2009 (Sony) In Julie and Julia, a perky and ambitious young Manhattan writer named Julie Powell, decides to cook all the recipes in Julia Child’s culinary bible “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in the space of a year — and write a blog about it,…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Up in the Air, Everybody’s Fine and Old Dogs
Up in the Air (Three-and-a-Half Stars) U.S.; Jason Reitman, 2009 In Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, which I rather liked, George Clooney plays a prime/perfecto Clooney role: Ryan Bingham, a nice-seeming, glamorous looking guy with a highly remunerated, very nasty job. Ryan is a severance expert, a corporate gun-for-hire, who flies around the country…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Terminator Salvation, Wizard of Oz, A Christmas Tale, Night at the Museum, Paper Heart, Flame and Citron and more…
Terminator Salvation (Also Director’s Cut and Blu-Ray) (Two Stars) U. S.; McG, 2009 (Warner) Terminator Salvation — a big, roaring, burn-down-the-planet sequel to the Terminator trilogy set in the future — tries to be a new super-apocalyptic nightmare worthy of its Terminating predecessors: a cine-techno-bloodbath where man battles machine, cyborg battles mini-copter, robot battles android,…
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