

Columns By Gary DretzkaDretzka@moviecitynews.com
The DVD Wrapup: Long Day Closes, Downton 4, Cloudy 2, Bad Grandpa

Apart from the Beatles, no artist is as associated with Liverpool as director-writer Terence Davies, whose autobiographical dramas and documentaries go well beyond the impact of the Cavern Club on world culture. Even so, it would be difficult to confuse the Liverpool into which Davies was born and the one in which the Fab Four were raised.
Read the full article »The Gronvall Report: Joyce Maynard On LABOR DAY

Real love stories, where the exhilaration of two people falling headlong for each other is also laced with the dangers such plummets can bring are an endangered species. Real love, however sensual and joyful, is seldom without darkness, risk, and sorrow.
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup

Blue Jasmine, Prey, Terraferma, Vie De Boheme, Machete, Blue Caprice, Bronies and more.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: The Wolf of Wall Street
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (Four Stars) U.S.: Martin Scorsese, 2013 “An idea came to me. The thing to do was to skip the heroes and heroines, to write a movie containing only villains and bawds. I would not have to tell any lies then.” —Ben Hecht, describing the genesis of his…
Read the full article »Picturing Sundance 2014: 7 Looks

Seven first-looks along the streets of sunny Sundance.
Read the full article »Sundance 2014 Review: Locke

“I’m just driving, that’s it,” he says in one way, another, and another. It’s a journey to the end of his soul. “I’m driving,” he says, and the BMW is his cranium, and the voices the voices rocketing within, the car less infernal cage than fevered skull. But it’s not a stunt, no, no, no: all the confinement, the inspired technical legerdemain, it’s all a means to an end, and that end is Locke.
Read the full article »Sundance 2014 Review: Stranger By The Lake

Classically constructed, as rigid in its construction of suspense as any recent thriller, Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake (L’inconnu du lac), is a masterful work, uncluttered yet lush, formally regimented, yet always surprising. (Call it full-frontal Hitchcock.) It also takes its location, its construction of sexuality, as commonplace. Guiraudie’s movie is assuredly part and parcel of queer cinema, but also of the cinema of the quotidian, of the everyday.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Ride Along
RIDE ALONG (Two Stars) U.S.: Tim Story (2014) Ride Along, which grossed over 40 million dollars in its opening week, is a big, glossy, ultra-predictable buddy cop movie in which costars Ice Cube (Boyz n the Hood) and Kevin Hart (Think Like a Man) and director Tim Story (Barbershop) pull a comedy variation,…
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup

Enough Said, Spectacular Now, Short Term 12 and more.
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup

Murph the Protector, Ukulele Live, Runner, Badges of Fury, Dreamworld, Godard’s Hail Mary, Killing Fields, Following and more.
Read the full article »Best Of 2013: Nonfiction Features

A list of ten (with some ties), followed by an alphabetical list of another fourteen, from an exceptionally fine year for nonfiction features. I’m equally awestruck by the top three, The Act Of Killing, The Square and Stories We Tell, especially after multiple viewings.
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