Columns By Mike WilmingtonWilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Blu-ray. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
CO-PICK OF THE WEEK: BLU-RAY O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Four Stars) U.S.: Joel and Ethan Coen, 2000 (Touchstone/Disney) O Brother, Where Art Thou? — for whose title alone Joel and Ethan Coen deserve a medal — is an outrageously entertaining and inventive movie that still hasn’t gotten its due. The Coen…
Read the full article »Confessions of a Film Festival Junkie: Day 4
Glitch! Saturday morning’s early morning screening of The Descendents – Alexander Payne’s new film starring George Clooney – at the Toronto International Film Festival got into rather severe technical problems. Those of us standing in line were told at about 20 minute intervals that there was a problem but exactly what problem was kept vague….
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Mozart’s Sister
(Three and a Half Stars) France: Rene Feret, 2010 Mozart’s Sister, a film often lovely to see and hear, by French writer-director Rene Feret, is the fictionalized semi-biographical tale of a remarkable girl, her extraordinary family and of the beautiful music they all made together. But it’s also a very sad story, as stories…
Read the full article »Digital Nation: ‘Rescue Me’ From Uninformed Punditry About Hollywood and 9/11 …
In the lead-up to 9/11/11, two unrelated events prompted me to add my thoughts to the national conversation about one of the most disturbing and unconscionable attacks on non-combatants in history. Like most Americans, I’ve been given no deeply personal cause to obsess over the attacks. Neither do I need repeated visual reminders of the…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Contagion
(Three and a Half Stars) U.S.: Steven Soderbergh, 2011 Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion begins with a cough in the dark — something mundane, and ordinary, if irritating and unhealthy, that soon grows into something else: an explosion of fear, death and hysteria. As the movie proper begins, a title soon informs us that it‘s Day…
Read the full article »Confessions of a Film Festival Junkie: Toronto 2011 – Day II
Historically the festival has an almost unerring capacity for choosing the wrong opening night picture. This year was no exception with its selection of the U2 profile From the Sky Down. More rumination than concert film, it focuses on the group’s preparation for the 2011 Glastonbury festival, one of England’s most beloved musical events. They decide to revisit their seminal album Achtung Baby, recorded 20 years earlier in Berlin.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Warrior
Warrior (Three Stars) U.S.: Gavin O’Connor, 2011 Improbabilities won’t necessarily knock out a good fight film, if the feeling and the footwork are there. Warrior is a movie about a high profile, multi-million-dollar TV Mixed Martial Arts tournament in which too long-estranged brothers are both competing, and in which they finally meet in the ring….
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Box Set. Genius of Britain, The Scientists Who Changed the World/Stephen Hawking and the Theory of Everything
Sir Isaac Newton Genius of Britain (Three Discs) (Three and a Half Stars) U.K.: Christopher Sykes, Michael Waterhouse & Jonathan Rudd (Series director)/Gary Johnstone, 2010/2007 (Athena/Acorn Media) Science was my weakest subject in high school. And since I didn’t much like what didn’t come easily to me, and really didn’t like passionless, styleless writing, and since most…
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: X-Men: First Class, Hanna, The Arbor, Henry’s Crime, Scarface, Straw Dogs, Madea, Police Story …
X-Men: First Class: Blu-ray Let’s assume that the producers of “X-Men: First Class” had a very good reason for not naming the latest chapter in the franchise “X-Men Origins: First Class.” Like “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” it provides some of today’s most popular superheroes coherent back-stories and new cast members an opportunity to carve niches for…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classics. The Sacrifice/Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Four Stars Sweden: Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986 (Kino/Kino Lorber) In the mid-1980s, Andrei Tarkovsky, the greatest Russian cinema artist of the post-war era, traveled to Sweden to make what proved to be his last film, The Sacrifice. He was only in his 50s when he went to Sweden, but Tarkovsky, son of the famous Russian…
Read the full article »CONFESSIONS OF FILM FESTIVAL JUNKIE: Toronto 2011
There are some festivals that pivot abruptly from being a film geek favorite to an industry whistle stop. Historians cite the 1989 screening of sex, lies, and videotape as just such a turning point for Sundance. It wasn’t simply a rabid audience response (it was crowned their favorite but failed to nab the jury award)…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. Hanna
(Also Blu-ray) (Three and a Half Stars) U.K.-U.S.: Joe Wright, 2011 (Universal) Hanna, an action film for people who love action movies and also for some who don’t, is Kick-Ass and The Bourne Identity filtered through Pride and Prejudice. And I don’t mean that as a knock. Director Joe Wright, who made the 2005 Keira Knightley…
Read the full article »Studio Market Share, Summer 2011
Wilmington on Movies: Shark Night 3D
Shark Night 3D (One Star) U.S.: David R. Ellis, 2011 COMIN’ AT YOU, DUDES! HERE I AM! CHOMP! CHOMP! TEAR! RIP! SCARED YET? YOU WILL BE! YOU WILL BE! AAAAAAAWWW! CHOMP!! Who the Hell are you? I’m the Big Shark in Shark Night 3D! I’m the guy that rips off everybody‘s heads…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Sholem Aleichem Laughing in the Darkness
Sholem Aleichem Laughing in the Darkness (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.: Joseph Dorman, 2011 Let me tell you about this fellow Sholem Aleichem, or Solomon Rabinowitz, or Rabinovich, or whatever his name is: the very famous Jewish writer of long ago whom this documentary fellow Joseph Dorman just made the movie about. Yes, I’ve seen…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: A Good Old Fashioned Orgy
A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (One Star) U.S.: Alex Gregory & Peter Huyck, 2011 I don’t want to come across like a prude, but the new Jason Sudeikis sex comedy A Good Old fashioned Orgy is pretty much a bad, newfangled mess. Try as they might, writer-directors Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck can’t make…
Read the full article »