Columns By Mike WilmingtonWilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on Movies: New Year’s Eve (One and a Half Stars)
New Year’s Eve (One and a Half Stars) U.S.: Garry Marshall, 2011 New Year’s Eve may be the punishment audiences get for making director Garry Marshall and writer Katherine Fugate’s Valentine‘s Day such a big movie hit last year. That schmaltzy, heart-up-your-sleeve, all-star show, you’ll remember, strung together a lot of clichéd romantic comedy…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: The Sitter
The Sitter (One and a Half Stars) U.S.; David Gordon Green, 2011 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 funny, and after sparing some kind words for Green’s and buddy Danny McBride’s medieval four-letter-fest Your Highness,…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: In Darkness
In Darkness (Four Stars) Poland: Agnieszka Holland, 2011 Sometimes we let the horrors of the past recede into a comforting mist of melancholy and remembrance and well-meaning cliché. We shouldn’t. History is always with us. Agnieszka Holland’s In Darkness, one of the best films of the year, is a drama of the Holocaust,…
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Hangover II, The Help, Friends With Benefits, Cowboys & Aliens, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Medea, Underbelly …
The Hangover: Part II: Blu-ray The pressure on producer/director/co-writer Todd Phillips to create an instant sequel to the 2009 blockbuster, “The Hangover,” must have so great that it blinded him to the fact that it generally takes more than a few minutes to write, re-write and re-write again a prized property. That movie was so…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. The Rest: The Hangover, Part II; Cowboys and Aliens; Mr. Popper’s Penguins; Kuroneko; Behind the Mask
The Hangover, Part II (Also Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Combo) (Three Discs) (Two Stars) U.S.: Todd Phillips, 2011 (Warner Bros.) I laughed at 2009’s big comedy hit, The Hangover — that tense and raunchy tale of three longtime buddies at a wedding who wake up after a night of incredible but totally forgotten debauchery and have to try…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic. The Lady Vanishes; Crooks’s Tour; Design for Living (Hecht-Lubitsch or Coward); If I Had a Million .
In The Lady Vanishes, his marvelous 1938 classic of mystery and intrigue set aboard a train full of English and international travellers racing though the Balkans, Alfred Hitchcock pushes the form of the romantic-comedy-thriller to near perfection. It’s one of the most purely entertaining movies he ever made, and it can be watched over and over again with no diminution of pleasure.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: The Help. The Debt.
“The Help” (Three Stars) U.S.: Tate Taylor, 2011 Like smooth Kentucky Bourbon or hot cornbread and jambalaya, or like Ray Charles’ great bluesy versions of “Georgia on my Mind” and “America the Beautiful,” The Help is old-fashioned, flavorsome stuff — old-fashioned in many good ways, and a few not-so-good ones. Set in Jackson, Mississippi…
Read the full article »DVD Geek: Lucky Lady
In 1975, the heavily promoted Lucky Lady, sporting three big boxoffice names, was intended to be a Twentieth Century Fox blockbuster. Full of witty one-liners and some decent slapstick (especially from Reynolds), it followed the movie company formula for success precisely, but audiences quickly sniffed a turkey and the stars couldn’t save it.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Hugo
Hugo (Four Stars) U.S.: Martin Scorsese, 2011 Martin Scorsese’s Hugo — a movie masterpiece if there ever was one — is a film for film lovers to dream on. It’s an incredibility entertaining show. But how could it not be? Scorsese has made it at the peak of his craft and art,…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Shame
Shame (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.-U.K.: Steve McQueen, 2011 There have always been lots of movies that show or exploit sex, but far fewer that try to explore it seriously, as a rich, meaningful subject, whether psychological or social. And there’s only a handful of that few that try to portray…
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Our Idiot Brother, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Radioactive Wolves, Another Earth, The Future, The Art of Getting By, Horror Express, Rules of the Game, Smallville …
Our Idiot Brother: Blu-ray It’s interesting how individual members of a family can be a close as peas in a pod or, in this case, as different from each other as snowflakes. For “Our Idiot Brother” to work, viewers must suspend their disbelief long enough to accept the possibility that a guileless flower child (Paul…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classics, Sets. Orpheus; La Villa Santo-Sospir; Jean Cocteau: Autobiography of an Unknown
Orpheus (Also Blu-ray) (Two Discs) (Four Stars) France: Jean Cocteau, 1950 (Criterion Collection) Jean Cocteau, the French artist-of-all-trades who mastered many forms — he painted, drew, wrote and made movies — was a fountain of talent and an apostle of art. He was also a bit of a dandy and a…
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