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The DVD Wrapup
Beautiful Creatures, Cloud Atlas, Nightfall, Common Man, Love Sick Love, Rolling Thunder, Bad-Ass Girl, Ecstacy … and so much more…
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on Movies: The Iceman
I tell you, Michael Shannon looks at you, or he looks at the camera, whatever, and the cold sweat just shoots right through you. I bet it spooks you almost as much as if you saw the real-life Iceman guy, the real Richie, ready to ice somebody
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Wilmington on Movies: Star Trek Into Darkness
In many ways, it’s a relief watching this picture. After a decade of Patrick Stewart and company, and then more than a decade of franchise silence, 2009’s Star Trek ingeniously brought the original seven Enterprise crew members back together—in the process, demonstrating a flair for matching the new younger actors playing the old characters with our memories of the original crew—and, as it turns out here, some others memories as well.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on DVDs: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
There are three Deborah Kerrs in Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s strange and wonderful British war epic, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and like many young male moviegoers, I fell in love with all of them the first time I saw the movie.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on DVDs: Starlet; Cloud Atlas
CO-PICKS OF THE WEEK: NEW – STARLET (Three Stars) U.S.: Sean Baker, 2013 (Music Box) There’s ’at least one redeeming thing about the movies. Sometimes, they don’t really need hundreds of millions of dollars worth of superstars and special affects and expensive stuff to engage and move us. Sometimes pretty much all they have to…
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Escape, Charles Swann III, Back to 1942, Frankie Go Boom, Face 2 Face, Last Stand, Eagles, Of Two Minds, Bletchley … and so much more.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on Movies: Sightseers
Maybe I’m getting cranky, but I found very little to laugh at in the alleged black British comedy, Sightseers — a terminally nasty love-on-the-run thriller in which a couple of strangely ordinary-looking British misfits named Chris and Tina take a caravan trip though the North, a vacation that eventually turns into a murder spree.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on Movies: The Great Gatsby
Ignore the bashers. Baz Luhrmann’s often dazzling, sometimes excessive, frequently fascinating film of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age masterpiece, The Great Gatsby—a movie that has been trashed by a number of critics—is not only not a disaster. It’s one of the best movies of the still-young year.
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Jack Reacher, Upstream Color, Starlet, Oranges, Safe Haven, ID:A, Mama, Rabbi’s Cat, Gatsby, Henry Fonda, Zapata… and so much more.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVDs: Strictly Ballroom; Cloak and Dagger; The Guilt Trip; Mama
Strictly Ballroom, Cloak and Dagger, The Guilt Trip and Mama.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Silver Linings Playbook
Silver Linings Playbook is the strange name for what seems a sort of semi-screwball comedy for the new millennium: a smart and amusing movie felicitously co-starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jackie Weaver, Julia Stiles, and Chris Tucker in roles meatier than we expect and played probably as well as they could be, with great big dollops of joyous spontaneity, live-wire energy, bristling wit and just a touch of darkness.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on Movies: Pain and Gain
Pain & Gain is Michael Bay’s new picture, and, for him it‘s a departure. It’s a big, bright, violent movie, but it’s derived from fact this time, (or at least from allegedly factual newspaper articles).
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on Movies: Iron Man Three
Iron Man Three may well be the last of the Iron Man series, but frankly, I was getting tired of those robo-duds by the end of the second (worst) one.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on Movies: The TCM Classic Film Festival
If you love movies… For just a moment or two, the TCM Classic Film Festival can turn you into a 12-year-old again. A 12-year-old on movie day.
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China Beach, Broken City, Not Fade Away, Happy People, Vampire Lovers, Kluge, Graham Greene…and so much more.
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Gangster Squad, Django, Pawn, In the Blood, Central Park 5, G-Dog, Mr. Selfridge, Cold Prey, Electric Button and even more.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on DVDs: The Red Menace; Jack Reacher; Gangster Squad
Is The Red Menace really “The Reefer Madness of anti-Communist movies? Or is that flattering it? Too earnest to be funny, too serious to be camp, too boring to be effective propaganda, this Herbert Yates-produced doozy from Republic (for which it stands) is probably one of the worst of the post-war anti-Commie thrillers, entertainment-wise. It isn’t even dumb enough be dumb fun, since writers Albert Demond and Gerald Geraghty know something about their subject. They have dialogue about Hegel, and a Red temptress has a bookcase full of tomes by Marx and Engels.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on Movies: To the Wonder
A strange, poetic, puzzling. stunningly visualized, and defiantly personal piece of spiritual autobiography on celluloid, an ambitious, pictorially stunning creation by an artist who makes movies as it the art form had just been invented, and he was free to do anything, try anything, but also by a man who’s hip to cinema technology and aware of other arts and literature as well—and finally, by a man who sees the world (in his films) with something like the newly opened eyes of a child (as a gorgeous, enrapturing place) and comprehends it with a child’s relatively fresh, unspoiled heart and soul. All of these seemingly contradictory artists are Malick, who, like Walt Whitman (another naïve and sophisticated earthy giant of a poet) is large and contains multitudes and loves the way the sun pours down on leaves of grass.
Read the full article » 5 Comments »Wilmington on Movies: Oblivion
There aren‘t many movies around as beautiful to look at as the first part of Oblivion, and since pieces of that beauty survive into the more conventional slam-bang second part, it‘s worth a look — though I would definitely suggest that you see Oblivion not on a normal screen, but in IMAX. Kosinski displayed a strong visual imagination in the critically-bashed Tron LegacyBut this is his show — adapted from a story and graphic novel he wrote, to try to sell (successfully) this movie, and it’s clear he has more emotion invested in it.
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Wilmington on DVDs: My Son John; The Woman on Pier 13 (I Married a Communist); Promised Land.
My Son John; The Woman on Pier 13; Promised Land
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