DVD Reviews
Wilmington on DVDs. Casablanca
You think Michael Curtiz is a hack? It‘s only because he made so many movies. But his list of hundreds includes two or three dozen genuine classics. And the other several hundred aren’t bad either. In fact, director-movie-lover Rainer Werner Fassbinder ranked Curtiz at the top of his list, next to Luchino Visconti and Douglas Sirk.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on DVDs. The Iron Lady
Meryl Streep, the American movie star who plays/ impersonates/ inhabits/ incarnates Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” is not only one of the greatest movie actresses of the 20th and 21st centuries, an artist of confounding competence, flawless mimicry and consistent brilliance, but a smart student of life and humanity who who can vanish into her parts totally. And here, she’s giving what is certainly one of her most impressive performances.
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Wilmington on DVDs. A Trip to the Moon; Melies, First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913)
Méliès’ great little show was first released in the black-and-white prints most of us know, but also in an original hand-tinted color version that was missing for nearly a century. But that second version, discovered in a Spanish film library in 1995, has now been definitively restored in colors as radiant and luscious as ice cream melting in a silver tureen.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on DVDs. We Bought a Zoo, No Man of Her Own
If only “We Bought a Zoo” could do for zoos what “Sideways” did for wine, we’d all be in clover and up to our knees in humane enclosures. Although I’m a big fan of zoos myself (especially San Diego’s and the giraffe and bear enclosures at the Lincoln Park Zoo) and though this is a likable movie, full of likable people, and likable animals and though star Matt Damon is a very paragon of likeability, the movie just vanishes out of your mind (or mine at least) after you leave.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. War Horse.
The script of “War Horse,” a heart-crusher, is rife with coincidence, pulsing with melodrama. Violence and tragedy are often close to overwhelming it. But it’s also a good story, an often gripping one.
Read the full article » No Comments »The DVD Wrapup: War Horse, Zoo, Miss Bala, Chinatown, Tyrannosaur…
Gerardo Naranjo’s “Miss Bala” describes how weird things can get when the trajectories of a violent drug gang and contestants in a beauty pageant cross paths in Tijuana, one of the world’s most dangerous cities. “Miss Bala” is an extremely violent movie, as befits the times in Mexico’s drug war, but Lino’s determination to give Laura her shot at stardom borders on the hilarious. By the time she gets to the interview stage, Laura can barely remember her name. Naranjo uses Tijuana as well as Steven Soderbergh did in “Traffic” and the cruelty of the perpetrators of the violence is palpable throughout the movie.
Read the full article » No Comments »The DVD Wrapup: Dangerous Method, Broken Tower, Delta… More
The way Mátyás Erdély’s camera lingers on natural phenomena recalls the haunting imagery that distinguishes the Terrence Malick, Bela Tarr and Andrei Tarkovski. In Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó’s “Delta,” depictions of the area’s natural beauty run contrary to the ugliness of the local male population, whose only mission in life appears to be diminishing the potential for happiness in others.
Read the full article » No Comments »The DVD Wrapup: Carnage, Louder Than a Bomb, Dragon Tattoo, Gainsbourg… More
Say what you will about Roman Polanski, the man can still direct movies.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic. On the Bowery
On the Bowery is Lionel Rogosin’s legendary 1956 documentary about men who drink, set in the derelict bars, flophouses and missions of New York City‘s Bowery in the ’50s. Now beautifully restored in 35 mm by Milestone Films, this black and white film chronicle of a short season in hell below the 3rd Avenue El, is an almost unbearably honest film.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on DVDs. The Sitter, Louder Than a Bomb, Hop
Well, I’ve had it. After defending David Gordon Green for making Pineapple Express, a controversially violent stoner comedy that I think is well-acted, well-directed and hot-damn funny, I find myself confronted with this silly-ass comedy and harebrained Jonah Hill vehicle The Sitter, a movie that tries to stuff the white-boy car-crash raunch of The Blues Brothers and the paranoid comedy of After Hours into the kids-out-all-night plot of Adventures of Babysitting, and comes up with something just this side of Adventures in Idiocy or maybe Francis the Talking Mule Goes to a Swinger’s Club or maybe Plan 9 from a Night at the Roxbury.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Muppets
Rooney Mara is no Noomi Rapace. At least when it comes to playing superpunk, black-jacketed, neo-noir heroines with burning eyes, pierced eyelids and deadly temperaments. But she’s close.
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Wilmington on DVDs: The Moment of Truth
By the end of the film, after Rosi and the audience have followed a young bullfighter, Miguel or “Miguelin,” from provincial poverty all the way to fame in Barcelona and Madrid, to the brink of massacre, and to the moment of truth, of oblivion, that every matador, every bull, every screaming member of the crowd, must feel or face in their own ways — at the end of all that, in the presence of our God and a church, we sense that we‘ve seen not just seen an exotic entertainment, but that we’ve had a life experience. It’s a terrifying film, and a wondrous one, and, as you watch it, it drains your heart and guts, as it stares fiercely into the sun, like Kurosawa.
Read the full article » No Comments »The DVD Wrapup: Descendants, Marilyn, Young Adult, Bellissima, More
“Bellissima” features a tour de force performance by Anna Magnani as a fame-obsessed stage mother, whose only moderately talented daughter becomes a pawn in a game designed to impress studio executives looking for the next big child star. Magnani’s Maddalena Ciccone is so self-centered and determined to win the contest that she fails to notice how much pain she’s causing little Maria and her husband, Spartaco, whose dreams of building a house for them diminishes with every dollar Maddalena spends on photographs, costumes and bribes.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVDs: My Week with Marilyn, Happy Feet Two, The Three Musketeers, The Geisha Boy
Then there’s Michelle Williams as Marilyn herself. I said above that nobody could catch Marilyn’s magic. No one can. But Michelle Williams comes close. She does a wonderful job, manages to get some of her body and a bit of her soul. And some of her blonde haired beauty, the kind gentlemen prefer. (Gentlemen, hah!)
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Blu-ray. The Adventures of Tintin
All three of them (four, counting the dauntless Snowy), are constantly hurled into perilous exploits involving galleons aflame, crashing airplanes, scorching desert sand dunes filled with camels, sheiks and villainy, plus one of the most spectacular one-take car and motorcycle chases ever (a dam bursts just as the chase gets underway), and a climactic industrial crane battle (done, like the other action scenes, in what look like super-crane shots).
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on DVDs. Co-Picks of the Week: New. The Descendants, Melancholia
This is a perfect Clooney role and movie, just as The Hustler or Hud or The Verdict were perfect for Paul Newman, The Sting or The Way We Were or the Sundance Kid were perfect for Robert Redford. Everything that makes Clooney attractive on screen — likeability, smarts, vulnerability, earnestness in the face of chaos, that wry sense of being at the center of things but not letting it carry him away, and the ability to kid himself — is present in the character he‘s playing here.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on DVDs. Anatomy of a Murder, To Catch a Thief
Why has it lasted? Improved with age? Actually, surprisingly, when the shock elements of the movie began to seem tamer, its excellence as a realistic film drama became far more apparent.
Read the full article » No Comments »The DVD Wrapup: Footloose, 54, Vanya on 42nd Street… More
What’s missing from the Blu-ray edition of “54” is the 45 minutes of deleted material, compiled by Christopher and shown at New York’s Outfest in 2008. It expands on the promiscuity and cocaine-fueled depravity that made Studio 54 the attraction it was, while amplifying on Phillippe’s bisexuality, which was only alluded to in finished product.
Read the full article » No Comments »DVD Wrapup: Myth of American Sleepover, Hugo … More
David Robert Mitchell’s debut feature easily qualifies as one of the most criminally under-screened and neglected movies of the young century. While Hollywood continues to search in vain for the new John Hughes and independents hope to capture the same lightning in a bottle as “American Pie,” “The Myth of the American Sleepover” was there all along. Even in DVD, it succeeds at almost every level in capturing the joys, angst and insanity of being a teenager in middle-class America.
Read the full article » No Comments »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic. The Conformist
The Conformist (Four Stars) Italian: Bernado Bertolucci, 1970 (Arrow Video) Bernardo Bertolucci‘s 1970 The Conformist is an art film classic regarded by many cinematographers as the most beautifully photographed movie of its era. Vittorio Storaro, at his best, did the brilliant cinematography and the film’s main visual/stylistic influences include the American romantic/cynic Josef von Sternberg…
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