Columns By Mike WilmingtonWilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on Movies: The National Society of Film Critics Awards for 2012
Michael Haneke’s tragic and haunting French film Amour was named the Best Picture of 2012 by the 60-member National Society of Film Critics at their annual meeting in New York City—and that vote included my picks, on a proxy ballot. Haneke’s film, which also won the Palme d’Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, took two other awards: Best Director for Haneke and Best Actress to Emmanuelle Riva, for her heartbreaking portrayal of a dying musician.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Promised Land
Matt Damon, who’s become a kind of classic American leftist movie star—a Hank Fonda of the new millennium—has gotten trashed by some right-wingers (and some moderates and left-wingers as well) for his new film Promised Land. But I think it’s pretty good—a Capraesque tale about a big natural gas corporation trying to get drilling rights to the gas deposits in a Pennsylvania farming town that’s fallen on hard times. Damon, who’s one of our best actors and doesn’t always get the credit he deserves (because, these days, he gets slammed for his politics), plays a smalltown Iowa guy who thinks he understands and relates to these smalltown Heartland people, and has a Messianic sense about his job.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Rosemary’s Baby
Rosemary’s Baby is shot with claustrophobic intensity and voluptuous eeriness by Polanski and his gifted cinematographer William Fraker (who also photographed Bullitt), is a great-looking, beautifully-acted, very scary show that probably affects you even if you don’t believe in the devil (as I don’t).
Read the full article »The 2013 Crystal Ball: Sidebar – How Cable/Satellite Companies Ended Up Paying For Every Channel
Cable/Satellite is probably the best place to describe this massive change. 30 years ago, cable companies were fighting and spending to lay cables into the ground to deliver content to households on level never before experienced. They were fighting, region by region – often regions within regions – for these rights because they were, effectively,…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Jack Reacher
In any case, violence begets box-office, or so Hollywood often seems to believe—and Jack Reacher is an almost ridiculously violent movie, so ridiculous that if writer-director Christopher McQuarrie had dreamed up better jokes, and more of them, he might have had one hell of a comedy.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Looper; Cosmopolis
PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW LOOPER (Three Stars) U.S.: Rian Johnson, 2012 (Sony) The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door. Fredric Brown (The shortest short story ever written: Knock) Rian Johnson’s Looper is a classy time-travel alternate-universe science fiction movie, tricky as a con…
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