

Columns By Mike WilmingtonWilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic. Kiss Me Deadly
“Kiss Me Deadly” (Four Stars) U.S.: Robert Aldrich, 1955 (Criterion Collection) Something went dark and sour and more than a little crazy in American culture in the post-World War 2 era. And more than a little of it comes bubbling up like hell-froth in Robert Aldrich‘s and A. I. Bezzerides’ hard-boiled, high-style masterpiece Kiss Me…
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Barney’s Version, Season of the Witch, Sucker Punch, Erasing David, Tetsuo, The Warrior’s Way, Camille 2000 …
Barney’s Version: Blu-ray Although few things are certain in life, it’s safe to say any movie in which Paul Giamatti appears is going to save some aspiring actor, somewhere, the cost of attending a master class in acting. If there’s nothing else to like in the picture – an unlikely proposition, considering his many fine…
Read the full article »DVD Geek: Tracy & Hepburn The Definitive Collection

You would have to turn to the stage to find a comparable accomplishment to the films that Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn made together across a quarter of a century. The movies will always have their ‘screen couples,’ from Greta Garbo and John Gilbert to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but capturing the soul of the off screen romance and transcribing it to a consistent body of onscreen character interaction is far more difficult …
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. Sucker Punch, If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle
Sucker Punch (Two and a Half Stars) U.S.: Zack Snyder, 2011 (Warner Bros.) Great visual effects. Lousy script. That seems to be a consensus on Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, even among some people who like it. And I guess I’d agree. Sort of. The movie is too incoherent and confusing to be…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Transformers Dark of the Moon; Bad Teacher
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Three Stars) U.S.: Michael Bay, 2010 Mindless, soulless, heartless, mechanical, and shamelessly mercenary as it might be, director Michael Bay’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon — the latest in the often obnoxious movie series, starring Shia LaBeouf and a lot of Hasbro toys — is still one of the…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Cars 2
Cars 2 (Three and a Half Stars) U. S.: John Lasseter (co-director Brad Lewis), 2011 Cars 2 is another Pixar feature cartoon for kids, adults, old people and everyone in between — especially if they have a crush on post-‘50s car culture. I don’t, but I could feel the curious, obsessive auto-loving fever pouring out of…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: The Rest. The Adjustment Bureau, Unknown, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Insignificance, The Long Riders, The Brass Legend
The Adjustment Bureau (Also Blu-ray) (Two and a Half Stars) U.S.: George Nolfi, 2011 (Universal) A rising young liberal congressman named David Norris (Matt Damon), running for the U.S. Senate and on a fast track to the White House, blows his chances when The New York Post publishes photos of his butt-bearing college high…
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: The Island, Unknown, Cedar Rapids, Poison, Women in Cages, Andrei Arsenevitch …
The Island There’s no way to adequately synopsize Michael Bay’s latest sci-fi/action/thriller without adding a half-dozen spoiler alerts, and that’s not something I enjoy doing. What I can say about “The Island” is that it involves cloning, evil corporations and humans playing God; it’s chock full of exciting stunt work and chases, most accomplished without…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVD’s, Co-Picks of the Week: Classics. Zazie dans le Metro, Pale Flower.
CO-PICK: “Zazie dans le Metro” (Three and a Half Stars) France: Louis Malle, 1960 (Criterion) An impish little girl named Zazie, with pre-Beatle bangs, an unusually profane vocabulary and a seemingly endless sense of adventure, travels to Paris on the train with her mother (Odette Piquet). As soon as they hit Paris, her maman departs with…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs, Pick of the Week: Blu-ray. The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Bridge on the River Kwai (Blu-ray/DVD Combo) (Two Discs) (Four Stars) U.S./U.K.: David Lean, 1957 (Columbia/Sony) Moviemaker David Lean was a master of the epic (Lawrence of Arabia) and a master of the intimate (Brief Encounter), and his greatest films often straddle some strange, sublime borderland between the two. The Bridge on the River Kwai, based…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. The Eagle, The Concert
The Eagle (Three Stars) U.S.-U.K.: Kevin Macdonald, 2011 The Eagle is one of the more enjoyable adventure movies I‘ve seen recently. Set in the wilds of Old Britain in the second century , it’s an old-fashioned, well-crafted, eiting movie, adapted by director Kevin Macdonald and writer Jeremy Brock from Rosemary Sutcliff‘s famous young adult novel…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Green Lantern

Here comes another shot at Green Lantern again, in a big new superhero movie from Warner Bros. and D.C., and he’s got that silly little green mask again. And it strikes me as a silly green movie even though Reynolds is not bad, and even though the movie was made by Martin Campbell, who directed two of the best non-Connery James Bond movies. (I won’t mention the writers.) And even though it’s got a great villain, Sarsgaard’s Hector, who steals the whole movie, from Reynolds, from Strong, from Rush, from everyone. I bet he’d have stolen it even if they made him wear a silly little green mask too.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: The Art of Getting By
The Art of Getting By (Two Stars) U.S.: Gavin Wiesen, 2011 If you’ve ever been faced with a last minute must-do study cram for a class you’ve been skipping or ignoring, you have to be moved just a little by The Art of Getting By — a movie whose hero (hero?) George Zinavoy (Freddie…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Le Quattro Volte, My Perestroika
Le Quattro Volte (Three and a Half Stars) Italy/Germany/Switzerland: Michelangelo Frammartino, 2010 Movies, more than any other art form, can precisely show and beautifully render the appearance and feel and flow of reality: the look of the world, the way time passes, the way humans and animals and other life forms act on our planet. (And…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Mr. Popper’s Penguins
Mr. Popper’s Penguins (Two Stars) U.S.: Mark Waters, 2011 Well anyway, it’s not the penguins’ fault. Six of them — six handsome, lively and seemingly fearless emperor penguins — have been cast in the title roles of the new Jim Carrey movie, Mr. Popper’s Penguins. There, they share a refrigerated sound stage with the rubbery-faced, rubbery-limbed,…
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Red Riding Hood, Hall Pass, Jackass 3.5, Legend of the Fist, Kill the Irishman, Intolerance, The Makioka Sisters …
Red Riding Hood: Blu-ray If the word, “Little,” is conspicuously absent from the title of Catherine Hardwicke’s retelling of the venerable fairy tale, it’s probably because, 1) American lawmakers, parents and ratings boards are made queasy by the portrayal of sexual-awakening among “little” girls in the movies, and 2) there’s nothing remotely “little” about Amanda…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: The Rest. Battle: Los Angeles, Red Riding Hood, Hall Pass, Monogamy, Such Good Friends, Captain Newman, M. D.
Battle: Los Angeles (Also Blu-ray/DVD/Digital combo) (One and a Half Stars) U. S.: Jonathan Liebesman, 2011 (Sony) Seeing Battle: Los Angeles is like being forced to simultaneously watch, on big TV screens covered with grit, War of the Worlds and Black Hawk Down being mashed to a pulp. Ear-splittingly loud and mind-numbingly violent, jam-packed with gung ho war…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs, Pick of the Week: Classic. Diabolique.
PICK OF THE WEEK: CLASSIC “Diabolique” (Also Blu-ray) (Four Stars) France: Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955 (Criterion Collection) The worst kind of fictional horror, the kind that seeps right into your psyche and stings to life your worst fears, sometimes springs from what seem to be the mundane routines of life: from the seeming world of…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Pick of the Week, New. Another Year.
Another Year (Also Two-disc Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Combo) (Four Stars) U.K.: Mike Leigh, 2010. (Sony Pictures Classics) Another Year, from Mike Leigh is another look at the Britain he‘s chronicled so powerfully and memorably since his first feature, Bleak Moments in 1971. It’s a rich humane work about people and classes, friendship and anguish, marriage and loneliness:…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVD: The Rest. Just Go With It; The Company Men; Sanctum.
Just Go With It (Two Stars) U. S.: Dennis Dugan, 2011 (Columbia) Okay, here’s Adam Sandler again. He or somebody he knows saw Cactus Flower… Cactus Flower, you say? Yeah — the 1969 movie comedy, from Abe Burrows’ Broadway hit about a philandering dentist (Walter Matthau), the one where Matthau cons a pretty counter-culture gal…
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